Guild Wars 2

If you get your 20, I’d like to be in, as an alt. I should be on most weekends, barring travel.

fishergrip.4082:

Notice how only mesmers are trying to argue that confusion is not overpowered and even some unbiased mesmers agree it is overpowered.

I fail to see the contribution this post has to a discussion.

Mesmers argue it’s not overpowered because we’ve played this class for months and know the reason why the condition exists and how to best use it.

Think about what the build does. My hammer warrior swings his hammer for about 0.7-1.5k damage everytime he connects with his hammer. Add to that his utility (1k shout heals, condition removal, group cc), and low cooldowns he serves his purpose as a tanky, low-medium-DPS, cc-bot.

The Glamour Mesmer has 1-2k damage (conditional) but at the same times does boon removal, feedback, support areas. He serves his purpose as medium-DPS support.

The Bomber has 2-4k damage (conditional) and serves almost no support to the group outside of a non-offensive (no blind/confusing) Null Field. Its purpose is Tanky medium-high-DPS, minimal support. Notice the trade-off!

So now look at the class you play, perhaps it’s designed as High-DPS glass cannon. Confusion is pretty much a hard counter to that.

Please note, this is strictly from a WvW perspective!

A lot of the issues that stem from confusion is that people like their skill rotations, CD spam, and such. If you try to do the exact same thing vs. everyone and expect it to be successful, then you’ll be very frustrated.

If you actually think about what you’re using and when, confusion as a whole loses a lot of its strength.

For example, there are 2 Mesmer confusion builds that I will run. Each build is designed for a specific purpose, and conversely, there are different counter for each.

Glamour Build

• Designed to surf/bust zergs
• Stacks confusions by targetted AoE
• Very, very strong in groups of 4+ mesmers, can use/abuse (point of view) Focus 4 to stack additional confusion.
• Susceptible to in your face attackers, CC. Lack of clones make these guys much easier to kill than the bombers shown below.
• Held back by long cooldowns.

Confusion Bomber

• Stacks confusion by using clones
• Designed for smaller scale fights, 1v3 fairly easily, but still countered by typical mesmer counters
• Susceptible to AoE, large scale fights (No clones, no confusion)
• Inherently optimized traits
• Resistant to most thieves, quite spectacularly so, actually.
• Hard countered by condition Necromancers
• Hard countered by anyone who knows how to properly dodge, really.
• Not as cooldown dependent, still isn’t worthless when big skills are on CD.

Overall Counters

• Don’t spam skills. God forbid you don’t kill someone facerolling on your keyboard. You aren’t optimally playing your class if you are anyway.
• You should be able to recognize the type of Mesmer you’re fighting against, and play accordingly.
• Run Cleanse… no really. Conditions as a whole are incredibly strong because no one runs cleanse. Confusion abuses the fact that no one really wants to change their builds or playstyle.

Sorry, no comments on engineers, as I don’t really play them.

My Hammer Warrior rofl-stomps a lot of Mesmers. The kit itself does that. In addition to that though, I can pick a real Mesmer out of its clones, which takes away from a lot of the Mesmer’s supposed OP-ness.

TL/DR : L2P (couldn’t resist)

8/10 for looking like Dylan McDermott

Scouting a portal bomb does wonders to help defend against it.

You can set up your control spells/AoE in response. Putting siege in positions to cover each other helps to.

I do like the idea of being unable to stealth with an active portal down.

Either that or characters which pass through the portal get stunned or dazed for a short time.

papacooldown.9482:

You’re too kind, but to be honest I just moved so that we could sit in the centuar camp and duel GODS members all day

Not going to lie, the mini fight club we had going was the most fun I’d had in WvW in weeks.

I run 0/20/20/0/30, Rabid armor, Carrion Weapons. Staff / Scepter + Focus for W3. HP ~ 17k or so, in the process of obtaining Rabid weapons, so my HP would drop to probably ~16k, accessories will probably stay Carrion. Runes are Undead.

Been in W3 since level 20 or so, staff almost the entire time. Between staff/toughness/F4, I don’t have a problem versus burst. A quick Chaos Storm into Phase Retreat is great if you’re not stunned, and if you are…. that’s what Decoy/Blink are for. I will go into 1v2 without hesitation. 1v3+ takes a bit of thought, but that’s all part of the fun anyway.

PvE is where confusion kind of is lackluster, as mobs are a bit unpredictable for confusion, but between Illusionary Elasticity, Chaos Storm, and F1/F2, nothing stays up long. I’ll pull 3-4 mobs at once comfortably.

If we had a better speed boost, I’d run torch. However, Focus 4 is great for the interrupt and displacement. Focus 5 is good, not great, simply because I have no reliable root but can get confusion bolts.

Dimachaerus.7431:

Thing is, we can roll as big a group as we like out of our starting area, in any direction and get immediately swarmed by a larger FA force with 2-1 or worse odds against us. Currently the biggest thing FA has going for it is numbers. By god do they have numbers.

Fair enough. I can’t speak for it personally, as I don’t really spawn camp, but in my experience larger groups like that tend to be disorganized. We’ve steam rolled through a numbers disadvantage like that all the time. It’s all about that decisive strike. If you’re getting those odds at the back entrance, then, yeah you’re in a tough spot. Still. stealth bombing, portal bombing can break a defensive position really easily.

A minor criticism I do have of my fellow FA guys is that we tend to be terrible defenders.

In the strictest sense of the word, I don’t condone spawn camping. This applies more to FPS, in general, where your spawn points are fixed, you’re vulnerable, and can’t do anything else. However in this game, once you spawn until you specifically choose to engage outside of your safe bubble, you’re not killable. In fact, one could argue you have the advantage over the “spawn-campers.” Some areas you can still fight while invulnerable (where it plays a huge role in defense), which is pretty lame.

Unless you’re outmanned, you need to get organization on the server to group up. Siege? Portal bomb/render rush/stealth rush. There’s at least 2 paths out of everywhere. If you’re insistent on just banging your head vs the wall and going out 2-3 at a time, then you’re going to have a bad time. It’s not the other teams fault at that point though.

The on-topic subject:
Looks like there was some life on the BL today. At one point, the entire DH BL was red. Hopefully we see more spurts of combat like that as the week progresses. As evidenced by FA’s charge last week, no gap is impossible to surmount. Anyways, hope to see more groups not just run away from lonely little me running around by myself.

The off-topic subject:
It’s been beaten to death; no he’s not hacking. Watch him sPvP, play an ele, see what you can and can’t do. Also. The train of logic of some people is just mind blowing.