I get this feeling that the droprate is bugged. I’m gonna hold onto all of my little bags until further notice.
Yes, you apply 14k damage over 14 seconds. You calculated it wrong, it’s 14k total if moving, not 21k.
To one target. In a zerg. In a zerg that is spamming aoe condition removals nonstop.
….
Not sure what else to say.
and just won another 30g from my guild as i predicted that they will break mes again.
Now that’s just cheating
Thanks all for the comments and feedback!
With the nerfing of stacking sigils, I’ll adjust the gear section shortly… pretty much always makes sense to run Assassin’s + Ranger now (can’t justify to yourself that your perception stacks will pull Berserker gear to higher crit), which means I have to toss my ascended armor and start over. Oh well, that’s life.
Note that in some dungeons you can take a quick dip underwater and revert the stacking sigil nerf. Not all dungeons, but some.
Distortion shatter is currently bugged, unless this was it’s actual effect. It currently only evades attacks rather than granting invulnerability on shatter. Meaning, you cannot walk through Line of Warding, Static Fields and similar abilities like these. I assume Distortion is suppose to give you invulnerability rather than evasion and I do not see anything in the patch notes regarding a change like this.
Uhoh. Brb testing this.
Tested, this is a large problem. I’ll be sending a PM to Grouch about this. I encourage everyone to do the same.
(edited by Pyroathiest.4168)
Hey! They fixed iDisenchanter’s fifth attack! Parade in the streets commences. Think illusionary elasticity extends it? Think it works with staff clone winds of chaos attacks?
No.
I too have run it at least 100 times, absolutely nothing so far.
Hi. You don’t get to have staves underwater. You have a trident instead.
For those who didn’t see it…
Mesmer
- Added a skill fact for number of targets for skills that strike more than one enemy.
- Time Warp: Added a skill fact for number of targets: 5. Added a skill fact for pulses: 11.
- Mass Invisibility: Added a skill fact for number of targets: 10.
- Mantra of Recovery: Added a description to the Power Return buff granted by this skill.
- Phantasmal Mage: Fixed an incorrect number of bounces skill fact. This skill bounces 2 times (hits 3 targets).
- Phantasmal Disenchanter:
* Fixed an incorrect number of bounces skill fact. This skill bounces 4 times (hits 5 targets).
* Fixed a bug that caused this skill to fail to hit its fifth target.
* Updated the skill facts to have the appropriate damage indicator (separate from the general fix to minion skill damage).- Magic Bullet: Updated the skill facts.
* Added a skill fact for number of bounces: 2.
* Updated the skill facts to show increased bounces when traited with Illusionary Elasticity.
* Added a skill fact to show the confusion duration on the fourth target when traited.- Mirror of Anguish: Updated the description of this trait to indicate “pull” in the list of triggers. Fixed a bug that prevented this trait from working under water.
- Phantasmal Swordsman: Updated the skill facts to have the appropriate damage indicator. (Separate from the general fix to minion skill damage.)
- Illusionary Mariner: Updated the skill facts to have the appropriate damage indicator (separate from the general fix to minion skill damage).
- Illusionary Whaler: Updated the skill facts to have the appropriate damage indicator (separate from the general fix to minion skill damage).
- Phantasmal Duelist: Updated the skill facts to have the appropriate damage indicator (separate from the general fix to minion skill damage).
- Phantasmal Rogue: Updated the skill facts to have the appropriate damage indicator (separate from the general fix to minion skill damage).
- Phantasmal Defender: Updated the skill facts to have the appropriate damage indicator (separate from the general fix to minion skill damage).
- Illusionary Riposte: Changed the blocking skill fact and the buff gained while blocking to display the correct duration.
- Chaos Armor: Increased the culling priority on this effect.
- Far-Reaching Manipulations: Fixed a bug that caused this trait to reduce the cooldown of Arcane Thievery by 5 seconds.
Hurray…they fixed tooltips.
Another patch, another failure to fix our bugs.
Caed and Toker’s boots quiver
I’m not sure if you realize that this is absolutely not the saying…but it’s pretty fantastic imagining it.
and rework mesmer healing skills.
You know, I tried to figure out how that was relevant, but I failed. Care to clue me in?
The damage seen is a running total. I take it you’ve never bothered to look at your combat log before?
So technically running Mesmer at all is the opportunity cost there.
And this is the actual problem, not runes of strength.
I don’t even know what to say about this thread. I’m honestly astounded by the sheer number of people that come in here and spout drivel about how eles already have 4 weapons and all that crap.
…just wow.
At any rate, on topic. In order to implement this, they’d have to make something new. Normal weapon swapping wouldn’t work, they’d have to either program in a lock for it when in combat, or build a new mechanic altogether.
If they built a new mechanic altogether, it would take the form of something like templates, which people have been asking for since launch. Since we’ve literally heard absolutely nothing about templates since launch, I’m not confident that out of combat weapon swapping for eles will ever become a thing either.
(edited by Pyroathiest.4168)
It’s not that it doesn’t exist, it doesn’t exist in enough quantity/quality to be able to consider these runes balanced. 7% for having any might at all (which is very extremely to get) is too much. Things like the eng’s throw mine (the field toolbelt skill doesn’t remove any) are terrible and remove 1 boon. You’re almost certainly going to have more than just that one boon and be able to reapply the strength faster than the cooldown. Sorry if my post was confusing.
Ahh ok I think I misunderstood
That and often the sacrifices to obtain said boon removal/theft/corruption trade off too much just to be able to slow down a Might stacking build for a few seconds.
Basically the counters only really exist in an intellectual fashion rather than a practical one.
Which makes it tempting to just buff the everliving hell out of the boon removal options, the issue with that approach is it will completely shut down the option of running any other boon dependent build that isn’t a Might stacker. Which is a zero sum gain in exchange for the effort of making such changes when you think about it.
Which leaves adjusting the nail (rune) that is poking up above the others with a hammer.
The standard counter to boon stacking is mesmers. No mesmer build sacrifices anything of note to have consistent and high output boon strip. Whether it’s shatter, PU, phantasm, lockdown, or whatever odd build you choose to play, a mesmer can keep any might stacking build empty of might reliably.
However, you don’t see many mesmers nowadays for other reasons. That’s why the might stacking is out of hand: the standard counter is missing.
The way torment works is it does x damage on a static target, and 2x damage on a moving target. This used to be reflected exactly in the tooltip, but I guess they thought it was more clear this way. So now the tooltip shows x damage on a static target, and should say deals an additional x damage on a moving target.
Torment tooltips usually say “X damage each second, 2X if moving”. Check it on scepter for example.
So this case falls out of concept. I doubt that it is the torment that is bugged tho, my bet it’s just a tooltip mistake, but who knows, should test.
Ah, you appear to be correct. It’s a tooltip mistake obviously. Torment is torment, no matter what the source.
The way torment works is it does x damage on a static target, and 2x damage on a moving target. This used to be reflected exactly in the tooltip, but I guess they thought it was more clear this way. So now the tooltip shows x damage on a static target, and should say deals an additional x damage on a moving target.
Looks like a pretty run of the mill PU power phantasm build. I’d probably replace the ruby orbs with some type of runes, but other than that it’s quite normal. You’ll want to consider a higher output condition removal than arcane thievery though, possibly pDisenchanter or the mantra.
Changing anything just invites ANET to mess something up. Maybe blink will teleport you backwards or something and it will get fixed Soon™ after that.
Ah what faith we have in our balance devs. Refreshing, is it not?
Yes I was asking while in a zerg should I be grouped.
Also…it was mentioned the deep red is team chat, which I have noticed…but some players have this deep red even while I am solo. I just now joined EOTM and snapped a screen showing what I meant (I am solo and the “team” chat is showing up).
Edit: I think I just realized I am kittened. A “team” is made while in WvW I presume? I thought it was only for sPvP. Doh.
In WvW, team and map chat are the same, the only difference is color.
Where do you get the % health addon?
It’s something he wrote.
The normal question is between halting strike and mental torment. This depends on how often you’re able to get interrupts, but also how you want to play the build. Halting will generally give you more damage over time, but mental torment allows you to maximize your instantaneous burst.
Water field + blast is a significantly stronger heal than Restorative Mantras, though. Healing can be useful in some situations, sure— but RM is very rarely a good heal.
Restorative mantras starts at 2600, whereas a water blast does 1320, so it’s about 2 blasts. It has downsides like the delay, but isn’t reliant on multiple skills, has a far lower cooldown than any water field and can’t be messed up by light fields or feedback etc. So it’s quite different, but you haven’t convinced me it’s worse overall… except for the aforementioned “no-one can see it” thing.
I wouldn’t suggest the shatter skills miku mentioned, not so great with phantasms and I think it only has decent numbers with illusionary persona, otherwise it’s about 1-1.5k per shatter (not per clone)
Sorry, I wasn’t clear. RM doesn’t scale well with healing power, while water+blast does. You can get appreciable healing with water because of that, while 2600 is pretty close to the maximum for RM. And 2600 is a lot.
Uh….no. Healing power scaling means less than nothing, because if somebody is running heal power in PvE, they’ve made a terrible mistake.
I guess I"m not being particularly coherent
My point is just that no matter what, RM cannot provide a significant heal. I concede that water + blast is also a useless heal.
Well, a 2600 aoe heal is absolutely significant. Restorative mantras provides the best sustained healing in the game. Can it burst heal like waters and blasts in an organized wvw group? No, but it can maintain a high rate of overall healing…at the cost of doing anything else unfortunately.
Water field + blast is a significantly stronger heal than Restorative Mantras, though. Healing can be useful in some situations, sure— but RM is very rarely a good heal.
Restorative mantras starts at 2600, whereas a water blast does 1320, so it’s about 2 blasts. It has downsides like the delay, but isn’t reliant on multiple skills, has a far lower cooldown than any water field and can’t be messed up by light fields or feedback etc. So it’s quite different, but you haven’t convinced me it’s worse overall… except for the aforementioned “no-one can see it” thing.
I wouldn’t suggest the shatter skills miku mentioned, not so great with phantasms and I think it only has decent numbers with illusionary persona, otherwise it’s about 1-1.5k per shatter (not per clone)
Sorry, I wasn’t clear. RM doesn’t scale well with healing power, while water+blast does. You can get appreciable healing with water because of that, while 2600 is pretty close to the maximum for RM. And 2600 is a lot.
Uh….no. Healing power scaling means less than nothing, because if somebody is running heal power in PvE, they’ve made a terrible mistake.
Take off the radiant gear you’re wearing, that’ll fix it.
I could write 1000 words about sociological and psychological stuff why but I won’t. The conclusion is that proper ladder format and seasons will fix most of ego stuff, at least in rated arenas.
It’s sorta adorable that you think if they release proper ladders all the egos will magically disappear.
Wrong, but adorable.
PU Mesmer.
PU Mesmer and Engineer make for the worst type of condition spam you can imagine.
They are also both semi-viable targets and can share a lot of the attention you may get. Mask is right when he says that any class that runs with a Thief essentially has to tank all the attention because players don’t like focusing on stealth-classes.
Now PU Mesmers have their Illusions to spam and distract their enemies and draw some of their attention while still being fairly slippery themselves.Their Phantasms and Illusions also create a lot of visual “noise” which can be helpful in chaotic WvW environments. Both Mesmer and Engineer will be playing fairly durable builds and their condition-spam augments each other.
I’ve seen this in action once. It was a nightmare.
This is quite accurate. Also can work with PU mesmer and a P/D thief or even a glassy thief, that combo is pretty brutal.
If the only difference was one berserker instead of the swordsman then the difference in dps would be negligible. The only point I was trying to get across was against those who prefer to camp the gs in dungeons, where fights are 99% stack-n-smack style.
That’s an extreme though. Use the greatsword intelligently and while the damage will still be worse, it won’t be an incredible drop.
Honestly this trait will be better with 2 or 3 stacks, compensated by lower duration. Afterall shatter skills are there to deliver spikes anyway.
My fix is 4 stacks per clone, 2s duration.
Think it sounds overpowered? Run the numbers ,it’s not. 3 clone shatter = 12 stacks of torment for 2 seconds. That adds up to a grand total of 4200 damage over 2 seconds if your opponent moves, 2100 damage if they don’t. Not overpowered in the slightest, particularly when you consider that glassy shatter does 2k-4k per clone.
I kept alpha in the corner simply so wardens would perma reflect his direcitonal attack without any problems. It is possible to camp range him with gs with wardens keeping him at bay in a similar fashion from the distance too. I’ll try that later on tonight.
I know why you did what you did, but that still bypasses the fact that due to being able to easily keep 3 phantasms up in alpha fights, the greatsword instantly loses a significant amount of damage.
Again, I understand the meta builds, I run the meta builds. But if you’re going to try and make comparisons between using greatsword and meta builds, you need to try and avoid fights such as Subject Alpha in which you can basically afk melee with 3 phantasms up. The number of fights like that in the game is very very low.
I bet it was a lot easier too =P
Yes, VERY easy and got it done on the first try too. But that was actually a bad example though since I had to kite 90% of the time with sword but with gs I could kite and still deal damage.
We need a better comparison, an encounter where I can reliably attack with the sword without kiting. Luckily I had that covered too:
- [1 min 48 sec] Sw + 2 Wardens & 1 Swordsman
- [2 min 32 sec] GS + 2 Wardens & 1 Berserker
GS under same environment was about 30% slower than sword and even that was with ideal conditions. This is why everyone on here hates on the weapon – it’s just too dam slow.
While I run meta builds and such when I do dungeons, I must point out the faults of that comparison.
Greatsword is optimally used in a mobile and dangerous fight such as against the icebrood wolf. This is due to several reasons. First, the greatsword’s second large damage skill is mirror blade. You can’t use this if you have 3 phantasms out without lowering dps. The sword equivalent is blurred frenzy, which can be used fine. Secondly, greatsword is higher damage at longer range. This means that in a very close range fight, it loses lots of damage.
Note the spec that Fay was using. Greatsword+sw/sw, and she even talked about how she generally stays melee range with dual swords during alpha. Now, to adapt this into using a focus for alpha, you have 2 options. You can replace the gs with focus, or you can replace the sword with focus. You chose to replace the sword with focus, that’s fine. However, just because you have a greatsword doesn’t mean you have to camp it the entire time. You’ve also got that sword.
So, a better comparison would be the difference between sword autos with 2 wardens + swordsman and sword autos with 2 wardens + zerker. Alternatively you could try to do something with turning the fight into a mobile one similar to the icebrood wolf, but alpha isn’t really conducive to that.
Are you trying to imply that melee equals bypassing mechanics and therefore I don’t enjoy fighting mechanics? Do you realise that in a single arah path 2 run I switch my build six times so I can fight the mechanics better? I resent bypassing mechanics, it’s why I resent fiery Greatsword. The difference is, that actually bypasses, melee itself doesn’t. I don’t play for gold either, so don’t generalise – I’ll run a dungeon multiple times despite having my daily if it interests me because I play for fun and to hone my skills. Maybe one day I’ll be completely infallible, or at least hold some boss solo records.
Something to note is that fgs has become synonymous with stacking for many people.
Everything that comes after that is just beating the dead horse.
So, by that logic after having your first intercourse you should… stop? After that it’s just beating a dead horse, right?
No, no, you should practice to do it faster.
I’ll just post a reply I’ve made in the past regarding the torment shatter.
The torment shatter is actually a very weak trait. Any build with that trait could be done better as a standard clone-death build without shatters. The issue is that shatters are fairly easy to avoid. Dodgeable, blockable, blindable, etc. None of those apply with clone deaths. On top of that, 3 stacks of torment is just…eh. It honestly doesn’t do that much damage, and the confusion lasts 4 seconds at best. Your opponent will either straight cleanse all of it…or just stand still a few seconds using no skills and that whole shatter will do about 1500 damage.
Note that this isn’t something particular about your build itself. It’s inherent to the trait, it’s simply too weak to be a shatter trait. It doesn’t reward the sacrifice of so many resources well enough. Your big shatter is Cry in this build. It does 1500 damage if your opponent stands still and takes no actions. Compare this to a glassy shatter build where each clone (+ IP) will do 2000-4000 damage. So a single clone hitting is doing more damage than your entire big shatter, and it’s on a lower cooldown too.
Suffice to say, the torment shatter is not viable. It’s fun to play with, but I’d highly recommend that you avoid using it.
Than again, in PvE it doesn’t really matter unless you want to speedrun dungeons. If you go into a dungeon with a full group and people have half a clue, the group will succeed with any weapon setup.
While this is usually true, it’s not always true. Additionally, I find most of the dungeons in this game to be somewhat tedious. I’m not doing the dungeon to enjoy the sights, I’m doing it because I need the tokens, and I’d rather get back to WvW roaming or whatever else I was doing before the dungeon. Due to that, I prefer efficient runs.
So in the end, there is no right or wrong in PvE.
There may not be right and wrong, but there is slow and fast. I prefer to do my runs faster.
Dungeon design and progression (like new more challenging dungeons frequently) are the biggest disappointments in GW2. It feels like the designers pretty much gave up on this topic.
I agree. That being said, there are a couple of bosses in this game actually have interesting mechanics, assuming you don’t cheese them with fgs. However, these bosses still get stacked up on. Close range fighting is something that will always be a tactic in this game, regardless of boss difficulty. The only difference is the skill and practice that it will take to achieve the close range fighting successfully.
You don’t need a GS on maw at all.
I’ll use GS on maw if I’m feeling incredibly lazy and/or tired, since it allows you to more or less afk the tentacles. Meleeing them is more interesting though.
For molten duo you have reflects out the backside so you have the least excuse to be ranging.
If you need to solo the molten duo (which ended up happening to me a couple times), greatsword ends up being a pretty strong weapon, as you can’t get reflects accurate and effective enough to use that as defense, you have to kite. However…soloing the molten duo is something that should never happen in a strong party.
I would prefer Blink be 1,200 base and 1,500 traited range. There, mesmer mobility fixed <3
So uh, I feel like this would be incredibly overpowered. Mesmers are slippery enough with 1200 range blink, can you imagine 1500? That’s traited longbow range.
The silver and gold thing is something of a proxy for player skill. I mostly play as a roamer, so when I meet a silver rank player (e.g. silver colonel) I generally assume they are better than a bronze colonel who I assume is better than a colonel. Clearly this isn’t always the case, but there’s probably some correlation if the opponent is also a roamer.
Heh. Silver and gold is a proxy for amount of time spent zerging. That’s all.
People enjoy using a greatsword. They have said so, here, in this thread asking about why people use it. They have said why they think it works — and you’ve made it your mission to tell them they’re wrong. That sure is some optimal behavior!
It’s an attitude I see in many GS haters. I guess hating GS is just hipster as he said, it’s cool to hate GS because it’s efficient in what it does.
But, hey, I’m not going to make a thread about how X weapon is bad in X situations. I believe all weapons are good at what they are supposed to do. That’s it.
Don’t tell me that a scepter is better at bursting than a GS, just because you have blinded hate (because it’s cool to) for GS. Seriously, I’m starting to believe there’s a GS hating lobby group on the mesmer forum. You know guys, it’s making the forum very toxic. Can you let it drop !?
If you don’t like GS, you don’t need to go in every thread and tell everyone how you hate GS.
Something that should be clarified when discussing greatsword is whether you’re using it in PvP/WvW or in PvE.
In PvP/WvW, the greatsword is an amazing long range sustained damage weapon with our best chasing skill (iZerker) in the game. It also has fantastic burst potential with close range mirror blades in shatter builds.
In PvE, the greatsword is a substandard damage weapon with a not particularly great phantasm.
It makes a big difference where you’re using it.
For comparsion, theif shadow step is standard 1200.
And is on a 50s cooldown, remember that. Ofc it does do more, so a little difficult to compare it.
win 1v1 vs each class at bronze, silver, gold
win 1v2 regular levels, bronze
win 1v3?
Sounds sorta fun. What’s up with bronze silver and gold though?
This skill should function like the decoy skill/desperate decoy trait mesmers have which stealths the player despite the revealed debuff.
No, you don’t understand. The problem isn’t that the thief is revealed before the trait procs, the problem is that the thief gets revealed immediately after the trait procs.
This happens with mesmers too, if they take desperate decoy. However, it’s a major trait, and so the vast majority of people never ever take it.
They cannot admit their mistakes. That would earn a failing grade in Politics 101.
I thought that would earn you full credit with a gold star in Politics 101…
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/introducing-the-new-skyhammer-pvp-map/
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So I found out from this article that Tyler Bearce and Darrin Claypool are not necessarily the ones to be blamed for the atrocity that is skyhammer (even though they designed it)… but the blame falls on the playtesters.
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Apparently…“We’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback from our playtesters,” Bearce says. “Pretty much as soon as we threw this in for testing, our internal playtesters said, ‘This has to go on Live.’”
Claypool adds, “People who have played this map already have been more excited about playing PvP. Skyhammer has a really dynamic, old-school feel; like a Quake map.”
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I shall now begin the witch hunt to find these “playtesters”…
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On a serious note, I got skyhammer tonight. I hate it so much. I hate it so very much. I just bought a new laptop and I felt like punching the screen in every time I got pulled or knocked off the map.
I’d consider the possibility that the playtesters thought it was a fun and cool map, but nobody was asked whether or not it was viable for tournament play.
2x energy sigils are absolutely worth it. I will not run any build designed for pvp purposes that doesn’t include 2x energy sigils unless it’s some sort of super specialized zerg build. Even if you don’t swap weapons frequently, it’s still incredibly important. Lets say that when you do swap weapons, you’re swapping because something just happened. Well, you probably want a dodge. With energy sigils, you have one. That’s pretty much the bottom line. Energy sigils give you dodges when you need it, and for that they’re absolutely invaluable.
Let’s assume anyone absent from a match for ‘x’ minutes is considered a disconnect and given dishonor regardless of whether they return. What happens to the 9 other people? Are they forced to play out the rest of the match? Should their ratings be adjust still? What about rewards?
Unfortunately, you have to make their ratings still adjust, or having someone eat the dishonor to force a 4v5 when a match is going badly would become meta.
That being said, if a match starts and remains 4v5, then you could make it so scores aren’t counted.
So then people who invested time into the match get absolutely nothing? I think the way it is now is fine.
Ideally they make it so that matches are unable to start 4v5, but if for some reason that simple change is beyond them, then they could do it the way I proposed.
As much as I love 1,2k range blink, I’d say cripple. With phantasm mesmer it will give you so much more damage.
Either:
a) they don’t know how to fight you and get killed by your phantasms, in this case blink would be better or
b) they kill them and get crippled, so they cannot kite them as much or just simply walk out of their way (which can be done with izerker or iWarden for example) so you can spawn more.A lot of people know to kill phantasms so I think the cripple will be all around more effective.
Cripple only works on clones. Only the confusion death trait works on phantasms too.
Engi here:
If my HT wasn’t as strong as it is… well a few things:
My condi cleanse stinks.
My team support ( which I consider my role as engi to be) goes wayyyyyyy down.
I have limited stun breaks / non-existent stab / limited condi cleanse makes interrupting my heal skill a very nearly guaranteed death.
also don’t come close to arguing the water field thing. Rangers get a freaking 10s water field. Want to exploit a water field? bring 2 warriors an engi and ranger and blast that field 8-10 times.
If HT gets the shaft.. well you forget how strong med kit is.. selfish but very strong.
and well hgh engis…
The skill itself doesn’t need to be nerfed exactly. It just needs a longer and more visual animation, like most other healing skills in the game. No heal should be uninterruptable.