Guild Wars 2

Strider Pj.2193:

It is still forced. And you can’t guarantee that guilds would remain together.

Not missing the point at all.

Listen buddy. Sky is shelling out a lot of ideas here, and yes that would happen if you did all of them. But you are kind of throwing out the baby with the bath water.

I know the title says delete the servers, but that’s not actually necessary. What if you were playing sPvP and found a talented player that hasn’t played WvW yet, you could recruit them at no cost to anyone. Now that’s cool. The idea that you don’t choose a server until you are actually in the game, meeting people, and joining guilds, is refreshing. It lets servers pull players from a much larger pool and would probably help better to shape the identity of every server.

Tiny Doom.4380:

No. I’d sooner they deleted WvW altogether than delete the servers.

Server pride doesn’t just matter. It’s the only thing that matters. Without it the game mode is Nothing vs Nothing.

I’m just going to quote this guy as an example of someone who doesn’t comprehend the suggestion. I know a lot of you are intimidated by blocks of text, so here’s my TLDR. What if you choose your server when you stepped into WvW for the first time. Not right before you pick your first character’s hair style? The big advantage being that any server could recruit any unassigned player. The rest of the ideas are optional tweaks in my opinion.

SkyShroud, two words, elevator pitch. Work on it.

Blow up the servers. Full player choice as to where to go. But do it again every 3 months. Put the players and the guilds in charge of making their own lives more interesting.

I think that, for the past few years, the priorities of WvW has been misguided by its makers and it own community. I’ve seen people fixate on variety of gameplay. Big fights, small fights, roaming, defending, and so forth.

In the end, none of that matters. As an example, sPvP isn’t required to have as much variety for people to play it. If you, hypothetically speaking, made the content entirely geared toward roaming, people would play it. What kills the gamemode is not being able to meaningfully engage WvW spite the time of day. Furthermore, people need to feel the fruits of their labor in a set amount of time. This time must be consistent and must end in definitive success or failure.

There must be a way to play when you are outnumbered, when you are evenly match, and when you overwhelm your opposition. I’m not saying their needs to be a way to play that is independent of these conditions, but that their needs to be at least one directed activity for each of them, and as I said, each must have a point of known success or failure.

I’ve been away long enough to be overwhelmed by the changes to WvW. I’ve given myself some time to take it in. I’ve been running around the maps, watching YouTube videos, and checking the forum responses. I’ve had a brief chance to play with some of the swank new upgrades. Even equipped a med pack for the fun of it.

My assessment is that the new map, the new upgrades, the shrines, and most everything else new that I’ve seen is just trying to add depth and polish to something that still lacked the breadth of gameplay that truly attracts players. I feel it isn’t a wrong assessment for some to call most of the new changes “gimmicks”, because, in truth, I don’t see how any of them can be a draw for a player who isn’t already invested in WvW.

My hope is that the “overhaul” is in fact a rebuilding of WvW from the ground up.

Thanks for the info Ross.

I’m looking for options to improve my build in WvW when I’m running with the mob. A solid GvG build might be best. Currently I run a part glam/suicide clone condition build. The general idea is that I can hit an entire opposing zerg with confusion and spread around more conditions when my clones as they get insta-killed.

Constructive criticism please. I’m not trying to prescribe my build, I’m just looking for pros and cons to various alternatives. Oh and I know dazzling glamors + blinding befuddlement is a waste with the CD in place, which is why my build doesn’t have either.

Fox Reeveheart.1890:

Everything is too expensive, EVERYTHING. To me this game is already reaching an equivalent point in GW1 where platinum wasn’t viable anymore and people had to start using globs and z-keys as currency.

want to get that craft from 400 to 500? Pfft you don’t even have half of what it takes in buying stuff of TP to get what you need (because you’ll never actually have everything you need to start out with)

When scarlet’s kiss/rainbow came out, I had 10 gold and I couldn’t afford it, people said “Oh more people will get them and the price will go down” Well I was farming regardless and got about more gold over the course of the event. Those skins instead have jumped up to several HUNDRED gold in price, even before the event ended. Basically because I couldn’t afford it then, I’ll never afford it now.

I can’t believe how unfriendly this game is to the casual player in concern to endgame content. I never really thought about it until I realized that with 40 gold there really wasn’t anything I could do anyways with it.

Now some of you may have hundreds of gold I’m sure, but for someone that has plays now and then (and plays in bursts especially with decent new content) getting that gold took me a few weeks of play. I am frankly exhausted and yet I can’t really get anything nice with the money I had earned. I spent 30 gold on mats for getting to 500 armorcrafting WITH the crafting booster active and got roughly 40 points.

Sorry I had to rant.

Are you a troll? Ask your doctor today.

Warlord.9074:

Ya but you are forgeting that warriors don’t have anything besides Hp and armor and their own body to mitigate damage. They have no protection, no aegis, no stealth, no blinks or teleports, no clones, no pets, no vulnerabilities. (endure pain zerkers stnce are not invuln skills) no access to regen boon, no water fields, no healing symbols, no death shroud. In fact warriors have access to none of these mechanics that off more survivability than HP and Armor and Healing signet.

Any other profession that uses these other mechanics to the fullest potential can have more damage mitigation that a warrior who just has High base hp. The issue is you guys are not using them and complain that warriors are OP go figure.

Actually, you have several modes of sustain and protection. Regen is actually available in spades if you use banners. You have a series of blocks on mace main hand and sword off-hand, not to mention a 3 sec block on shield off-hand, all the basic equivalent to aegis. You have area of effect and single target weakness, which mitigates damage. Signet of Stamina gives you more evades constantly and passively. Rampage is a clutch survival transformation if you would ever use it. Now combine all of this with high mobility, solid condition removal, the widest variety of AoE control effects of any profession, and yes, Endure Pain.

The problem isn’t that you don’t have damage mitigation and so you need a powerful healing signet. The problem is that healing signet is so good, that you aren’t even aware of how to mitigate damage any other way. You don’t even know your own class because next to nothing that I mentioned allows for a maximum output of damage, therefore, it is somehow out of your field of view.

No, what I’m saying it that it should be treated as a control effect, because, in an action game, being unable to move is a loss of control of your character.

Immobilize IS a control effect, and should be treated as such. Yes? No?

Likes
- That interesting mix of PvP and PvE elements that separates it distinctly from the other two aspects of Guild Wars 2.
- Going on solo missions to take out dolyaks behind enemy lines. Getting caught in the act and getting away. Destroying both the enemy’s supply and the satisfaction of a solid kill.
- Keeps. Keeps are good. I like Keeps. Keeps with siege are best.

Dislikes
- No encouragement to be in multiple places. All rewards are at some final goal point, forcing everyone to amass to these points. All intermediate points to get to the goal point are dealt with sequentially, not in parallel.
- Investments into siege and fortifications are very transitory. It takes little to no time for your efforts to fortify to be completely lost. Logging out and back in only a couple hours later is often a painful experience.
- Do to a couple of WvW talents and the rally mechanic, nearby friendly NPC units can be more of a resource to your opponent then to yourself.

I’m in gold league.

At what point did WvW become no different then a game of whack-a-mole with forts? WvW, in my experience, has become almost entirely PvE. Zergs don’t want to fight other zergs, they just want to get to the next paper fort and reap the rewards. There is a total break down of conflict from where I am standing.

Problems:
1) A lack of ways to actively defend/sentry fortifications.
2) Aside from waypoints, forts are not worth anything to the player. And waypoints are not low hanging fruit, as they would say.
3) Rewards are stacked in favor of offense. There is nothing you can get on defense that you can’t get on offense both faster and better.
4) The ever increasing weight of offensive abilities bought with WXP. As the total average of WXP per character increases, so will the effects of all these offensive abilities. As it is, more often then not, a friendly NPC guard next to you is a liability, and enemy guards are an asset when fighting other players.

My initial thoughts on solutions:
1) There needs to be events that require players to actively standby within forts. This paves the way toward rewards. Without rewards, the majority of players will not defend positions they helped to gain.
2) Forts must be an asset. Forts need to provide much better boons then they currently do. I’m not sure what those could be, but I’m open to suggestions.
3) With more ways to actively defend and sentry locations, you can start to create better rewards for defense, but that’s not enough, the rewards need to be something different. If defense grants rewards that are made up of the same boons that offense offers, players will still simply do what is more efficient. Varying the rewards for offense and defense creates an equal spread of defenders and attackers. Thus interesting conflict.
4) I’m not sure about fighting fire-with-fire in this case. I would rather think it better to make the events spawned by forts be the counter to this issue.

Everything starts with solution #1 in my opinion. And I’ve got a couple of ideas:

Moral Events) Have an NPC from the fort spawn an event. Players who interact with the NPC get a bundle of letters. The letters then need to be distributed to other NPCs. The final NPC in the chain gets a buff. A buff like the invincibility buff that supervisors have is actually my thought. Its just enough of a buff that a guard who has it can be trouble for a small group trying to ninja your keep, yet not a real threat to a zerg of any size.

Supply Runs) Occasionally have an NPC spawn an event. Like before, let the NPC grant players a bundle of some sort. When the player then takes the bundle to a camp supervisor it turns into another bundle that is full of supply. Bringing the bundle back would give the fort something like 20 supply. Its not as good as a dolyak, but it might be more of a sure thing. It would be just enough supply that a player could set up some basic siege using their personal supply with it. Also, players who often run back and forth from camps to repair walls and build cannons will be grateful for a reward for that thing they do already.

I also suggest letting these events, and others, ramp up in frequency as the forts are upgraded.

Agreed. Remove the living story from WvW. I know you plan on keeping the event around for another 2+ weeks, but not in WvW please.

Been around a while. I don’t have an achievement for it, but I was in Lion’s Arch when Karka attacked it. I’ve also got the history of the Mad King equipped to my back. So I’ve seen just about all of the living story content thus far.

My favorite part so far was how the refugee situation with the Flame and Frost series resulted in problems on South Sun Cove. Its my favorite because it showed real interaction between the different stories, showing you that both events existed in the same world. Not each story contained within a vacuum. That said, I’m now going to make the rest of my point by simply asking a lot of questions.

So, if the Nightmare Court suddenly popped up in Kessex Hills, why haven’t we seen a response from the Wardens? If there is even a hint that Scarlet is involved with the tower, why isn’t Caithe perusing her to this story location? Would Caithe and a bunch of Wardens tromping on Krytan territory cause a problem with jurisdiction? If so, why don’t we see the conflict of interests evolve since we ourselves are in the middle of all this? Speaking of jurisdiction, don’t the Lionguard have a stake in finding and catching Scarlet along with the Seraph and Caithe? Shouldn’t that lead to political conflicts in dealing with criminals who ignore the boundaries of the respective nations? Would that create a problem that could in itself escalate? Or would it result in a new international police force?

Considering that most of Kessex is currently a poisonous wasteland, wouldn’t this cause even more people to become displaced? Would this have an effect on the world’s food and water supply?

Is it me, or is it unclear as to if the whole of the Dredge and Fire Legion have merged, or just a part of each? If only just a part of each faction, then what do the original faction leaders plan to do with this group of defectors?

Questions aside, I would like to see the world reacting more to the events that are taking place. I’m seeing a lot more of these isolated events that come and go without consequences. I understand we’ve been really concentrating on the Scarlet story for some time now, but I’m not seeing the world react to what Scarlet has done. Globally you should expect people to be either squabbling over who gets to her first, or you should be seeing some central organization rise to deal with this specific threat.

Hebee.8460:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Dec-10th-Balance-Preview/first#post3133104

•Explosives IX – Accelerant packed turrets. Moved to Adept tier.

Of all the changes, I object to this the most. In this case I believe you have favored balance in a way that deviates from how the class should feel. Worst of all, I believe it invalidates all the previous buffs you have recently tried to give to turrets.

Engineers are builders, fortifiers, they should be a threat to anyone who steps into a zone they have claimed for themselves. The Supply Crate is a perfect example of what promotes this. Accelerant Packed Turrets, on the other hand, does nothing to promote this feel. In fact, APT runs counter with all of the other turret talents and the turret engineer’s playstyle. Why invest a lot of points in improving the power or survivability of turrets when I can instead choose a more mobile and self-improving build that has 10 points to spare.

As it stands, I already see no benefit to placing a healing turret and sticking with it. I always double spam 5 and then move to blow up the turret. In return I get double the healing, full condition removal, a water field, a blast finisher upon that water field, and the damage from the exploding turret. The only sacrifice here is some regeneration, which the tool kit makes up for since I free it up for its use and another water field. On rare occasions the turret will die before I explode it, but I pretty much always get the water field. You can guarantee I’ll take 10 points in explosives just to ensure the blast finisher goes off and to enhance it with a control effect. You can also bet that I won’t see the need to change any of my other utilities to turrets.

I think turret engineers should be given incentives to place and keep there turrets, not place, explode, and move on. What I would like to see is fear. Fear from other professions. I would like to see other players see those turrets and actually question their chances of survival should they choose to fight on engineer soil. I want to see the effects of overcharging your turrets to be big. Way big. So big that other professions know the skills by name out of recognition of how good they are. In trade for that, put overcharges on cooldown when you place the turret. Make me invest the time into the ground I have chosen to fight on.

Saturn, you are correct and I am wrong. This behavior does seem different then what I remember. I’ve been playing for well over a year and I have read all of the patch notes. Yet I sometimes get the impression that not all changes are announced. Thanks.

Edit: What is stated below is not entirely correct. Read further for more explanations from helpful players.

Its Been a Year
Its been about a year now since ANet used a work-a-round to patch up Temporal Curtian’s swiftness buff. Its been about a year of the most annoying experience repeated over and over as players try to help other players. In the course of that year, TC has had two major debuffs. The most recent of these has severely affected its use as a movement ability when traveling solo in PvE. Now you enter combat if a mob follows you through it, negating any benefit of placing it down. Players must now either cherry pick locations to drop this skill, or avoid using it entirely as a means of traveling. TC is broken, and its brokenness is effecting mesmers and non-mesmers alike. I would really like to know when on the time-table we can expect the skill to be working properly.

For Those Who Don’t Know
Temporal Curtain is a mesmer’s focus 4. You probably all use it to get around because it drops a line effect that grants swiftness to allies that pass through it. Some of you may not have noticed that the swiftness buff you get from TC does not stack with other swiftness buffs. If you have 1 sec of TC swiftness left, and a warrior tries to give you a fresh one from their horn, you’re out of luck. The same works in reverse, if you have any other swiftness on and you drop TC, you won’t get more swiftness, or a replacement with a longer duration. Why? Because it originally did stack in duration and people were passing back and forth through it to get never-ending swiftness. In response, ANet fixed it, though not really.

Impact
Every mesmer should now know that, if you are in a zerg, and you want to be helpful, then do not place down a temporal curtain. For every fool you trick into going through that line effect, you cause one more player to get un-stackable swiftness which causes the tail of the zerg to get ever longer and longer. If you really want to be helpful, ask a warrior if you can get a banner and spam 3 instead. I’ve tried recently to travel on maps with my wife, who plays a guardian (the other slow moving class) and we try to pass swiftness off to each other. It gets annoying though since our buffs don’t stack and often times I’ll get a buff that she won’t or we will accidentally waste one of our abilities with no effect.

What I Would Like to See
Ideally, each instance of TC should stack swiftness on a character once so that multiple TC effects grant longer and longer durations of swiftness. Ideally, TC swiftness should stack with other sources of swiftness so that it isn’t detrimental to a zerg when someone tries to help by placing TC. I think you can make this happen ANet. I just want to know if you are even working on it.

I play a lot on the off hours of my server, so I don’t get as much time waiting in the queue. I also stay away from EBG. So the only real change I’ve seen is that I stomp a lot more players and I’ve got invaders passing right by as I slap their server’s yaks. A lot of the PvE player’s either don’t know how to fight other players, or don’t want to. Achievements can’t change that fact.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

Honestly, I have a hard time to understand how this build can be of any use in PvE. What is it good for and how do you kill things?

The build I’m currently using is ideal for pug groups where all-too-often people have no idea what they are doing. The link is also misleading and has thus been removed. For one, I switch around utilities, weapons, and jewelry quite often. Sword main for stacking, focus for projectile heavy situations, you get the idea.

As for my contribution to damage, I personally have roughly 100% up-time on fury, ~14 stacks of might, and retribution. But might stacks that I spread to allies also counts as damage that I contributed, so take my might and multiply it. I also have berserker’s jewelry for kicks.

Still, nobody had actually answered the question until Chaos Archangel.

Switch Hitter: is something I’m going to define here and now as a single trait allocation that can be swapped from one build, when out of combat, to an entirely different build without having to find a trainer for respec’ing.

I use a 10-10-30-20-0 build for PvE support. I want people to brainstorm a 10-10-30-20-0 build for WvW roaming. You can choose any weapons, utilities, stats, runes, sigils, and food. You can pick any major traits using the trait allocation listed int he title. I’ll toss a gold or two to the builds I like the most.

(Edited for clarity of what I’m looking for.)
(Edit: I’ve also removed the link because the point is to make a new build, not critique the old one.)
(Edit: I’m no longer judging based on similarity to the old build.)

My Staff and Signet build.

Most staff PvE builds are Signet of Inspiration builds in my experience. They are a joy to play if you like seeing your allies suddenly light up with a ton of boons. Obscures your vision on the left side by only a bit.

I’ve linked the build I use at the top of the post, but if you do some looking around you’ll find a few other variants. The combo for the build is simple, use staff 5 and stand in it, use staff 4, heal, switch weapons, do something else, use signet of inspiration. By the time the duration on chaos storm is through, you should have a ton of boons to hand out along with the boons you were handing out already. I then use staff 2’s leap finisher and torch 4’s blast finisher on my own fields or on fields my allies drop.

Only staff is necessary, you can use any other weapons you want. You also don’t need to go for soilder’s gear either. All the stats are optional and you can go berserker’s and be just as effective at support. Good luck.

P.S.: Never leave home without a focus in your inventory. Ever.

As of this writing, I support three options for making team chat better. 1) make it chat for all WvW maps for that server 2) make it into squad chat for commanders to talk with parties under their command 3) remove team chat entirely.

None of these are entirely exclusive. The best solution I think is to make squad chat, remove team chat for a couple of months, and then bring it back new and improved.

For those people who want to up-vote a global commander chat, let me outline two basic reasons why you shouldn’t do that. The reasons are listed as a) why its the most terrible solution put forth, and b) why players can actually make this chat better then the devs can.

-
a) Why its the most terrible solution put forth.

I’m sure you would think a chat for commanders only sounds like a great way to coordinate strategy in WvW. The problem is that people have a lot of reasons to get commander status other then for WvW. Some of these reasons are shear vanity. There are a lot of commanders on every server. There is no reason for a commander doing temple runs to want to talk with a commander in red borderlands about taking care of business. I’m sure the commander in a living story event cares even less. Commander chat wouldn’t be some back-and-forth chatter about strategy and enemy positions, it will be the same old trash you can find in Lion’s Arch. The only thing it would accomplish is the stroking of a bunch of egos.

-
b) Why players can actually make this chat better then the devs can.

Its called guild chat. You make a guild, you call it “insert server name here” WvW Commanders, tag it as WvWC, and invite any commander tag you see roaming WvW. At least then you know the commanders care about what you care about. At least then you don’t have commanders missing out on conversations when they are on their alts. Remember, commander tags are character bound, not account bound.

Avatar Yirachi.7162:

This would be horific. On low pop servers it might work, but on high pop servers this chat will literaly explode. Enabeling such a feature for commanders would be really good though.

Do you mean for an only commander chat, or do you mean a chat for everyone in a squad with a particular commander. Honestly, since commander icons are really only gotten with money, I don’t see anything prestigious about it. If it was earned with honor badges, I would like the idea of them more. That said, commander chat wouldn’t be a spy free chat.

(A point on the side, I think you mean figuratively, not literally. And you spelled three words incorrectly in an age where spell checking is readily available. Good luck.)

Dawdler.8521:

“OMG zerg on north bay, door at 80%!”
“What? There’s no one here.”
“Yes there is, look at the swords!”
“There are no swords -.-”
“Come on people, we need to defend bay, they are on lord.”
“But we are assaulting bay from the south :/”

I’m sure it’ll work fine…

I grant you, it would happen at first, but eventually most people would understand the difference.

An additional feature that would help would be to add a tag to the person’s name that told you from what map they were chatting in. Yet, depending on how the programming for the chat is written, that might be an easy to near impossible feature to implement.

Is there any work to make team chat in WvW meaningful? Shouldn’t it allow players on all WvW maps to communicate, just like how I can talk to guild members no mater where I am?

I think it would a) give team chat a reason for existing and b) allow for better in-game coordination for total victory.

Edit: See my post below for reasons why I think a global commander chat is both terrible and unnecessary.

The only point I’ll make is that regardless of your build and play-style, if you run dungeons, then always have on hand a sword, a focus, and a ranged main hand weapon. Always be willing to swap out weapons and utilities as the occasion requires it. If you’re really good, you’ll hot-swap traits as well.

Pistols and torches are both actually optional. So are starves, scepters, and great swords provided you have one of the three. In theory the great sword can substitute the main-hand sword.

I think it goes without saying you should have your water weapons too, but I said it anyways.

Baa.4582:

Quaygal.5327:

and reflects all incoming projectiles for that 1 second.

Masterful reflection works only for F4. Blurred frenzy and Blurred inscriptions do not trigger it.

Good to know. Sounds like a bug. I’ll fix the original post.

(I plan to do a few of these posts and hope that experts on other skills will continue the series. The point of these are to focus in on one particular skill and only talk about that one skill. This is not a discussion about whether a skill is underpowered or overpowered. This is just a discussion on what makes the skill unique and what are the interesting applications of the skill. Other skills can have their own posts to honor them, and please don’t wait for me to make a post on the skill you want to really talk about.)

The Phantasmal Defender can be found on your utility bar and, unlike the phantasms found on your weapon bar, is not for dealing damage. It does way more then a clone in terms of harm, but that is not why I would ever choose to put one out there. Its main function is to absorb damage, half to be exact. What is the most interesting aspect of the skill, is that even though the tool tip doesn’t say this, the damage it absorbs can be from your entire party, not just the mesmer that created it.

The fact that it absorbs damage from both you and your allies is actually a really important detail that is clearly obscured by the tool tip’s language. Another big detail is that it actually has a lot more health then your standard phantasm, about 2.5 times more health. It actually has the health of whole other player character in fact.

Let’s go over the details of its most important mechanic. The defender splits damage with allies who get its buff. The buff lasts 5 seconds and is renewed every 5 seconds in a 600 radius around the phantasm. It will not send out its buff if it can not attack. The buff can apply to other phantasms. Lastly, retaliation on the phantasm is triggered when it splits damage. A cool thing to note since the Vengeful Images trait gives all phantasms retaliation.

Now to know something about phantasms. The only way I know to make them more survivable is to take specific traits or skills, or to boost them up with boons. The defender’s starting health is 19,943 in PvE and can be boosted to about 33,903 if you choose to use the Persisting Images trait and the Signet of Illusion.

Now for its application. The defender is fine in just about any non-zerg situation. If your running a phantasm build, its a great way to keep your damage dealing phantasm up and doing their thing. If you’ve gone at least 15 points into the inspiration trait line at all, then it becomes another great source of renewable regeneration thanks to Phantasmal Healing. Its a terrible choice for some of those PvE living story events or for WvW karma trains. Just about every group zerg situation will result in your phantasms shattering just as you put them out because the target is now dead and gone. Personally, I like to use this skill in specific fights, such as in dungeons against high damage bosses like Alpha from CoE, or in water fights where its hard to dodge blows because there are way more vectors to be attacked from. Any other time, I feel the skill is pretty optional.

(Other “Know Your Skills”: Signet of Midnight )

LokiShi.2876:

I can personally say that the value of this skill is very dependent on the traits chosen. While good on its own, a stun-break and blind on a 30sec cooldown is worth it on its own (in a sense), a single trait allows for use/need in some builds. Let’s look at the worth of taking Blinding Befuddlement to add a little damage to breaking a stun. Now I know 1x confusion on blind isn’t much of an improvement, especially since it is on a 30/24sec cooldown, but what else applies blind that would be used in conjunction with it? In the current meta the “blackwater” condition build is widely popular using scepter/torch, staff. Torch also has a blind/stealth on a 30/24 second that can be used much like the signet. While staff doesn’t have a “direct” source of blind, it does have Chaos Armor that procs not only the blind, but also the confusion. So if your using the signet in a variant of the blackwater build, or at least a build that uses torch/staff to some extent, the signet fits perfectly, when traited with Blinding Befuddlement. Now remember that is just 1 application of the signet that relies on active use/defense, and only 1 trait. If you build for the signet further, you can get even more defense with condition cure and distortion.

So after that wall of text what do I expect you all take away from it? The signet, while not the best, has a potential spot in certain builds and it can be irreplaceable in its own right.

Ps. If enough are curious about the blackwater variant I was talking about I would be glad to share.

If I was running a straight up Blackwater Mesmer build, I would probably never touch the Signet of Midnight. You would certainly need to modify the build from its original. No actual argument here though since you were talking about making a variant.

Helios.3598:

is it 30s CD?

this
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Signet_of_Midnight
says it is 35.

I currently only use sig of midnight when i’m doing map exploration for longer swiftness buffs.

Says its 30 seconds when I look at the page. I also use the skill enough to know its 30 seconds. That’s without the Signet Mastery trait of course.

(I plan to do a few of these posts and hope that experts on other skills will continue the series. The point of these are to focus in on one particular skill and only talk about that one skill. This is not a discussion about whether a skill is underpowered or overpowered. This is just a discussion on what makes the skill unique and what are the interesting applications of the skill. Other skills can have their own posts to honor them, and please don’t wait for me to make a post on the skill you want to really talk about.)

The Signet of Midnight skill interests me a lot because its utility is very dependent upon the traits a mesmer has. As an extreme example, the signet without any traits normally just allows you to blind targets around the caster and break stun every 30 seconds without any casting times. Fully traited, the skill does its usual thing every 24 seconds, adds a stack of confusion along with the blindness, cures 1 condition, and makes you invulnerable for a full second. Let’s not also ignore the fact that, regardless of traits, you get +10% boon duration while it is off its cooldown.

That said, I don’t think anyone should go so far as to actually build around the Signet of Midnight. The point I’m making is that the skill’s inclusion into your bar should be highly dependent on the traits you have already chosen, unlike other skills that a mesmer may choose based purely on its performance without traits. Based on the skills inherent effects alone, I’m pretty sure that 95% of the time, another mesmer utility will help you out much more. But if you have room for Cleansing Inscriptions or Blinding Befuddlement in your build, then suddenly the value of the skill increases dramatically.

I do leave room for including the skill in your bar while untraited for one particular reason though. Simply put, it is not as easy to replace the passive effect of the signet, particularly in staff/Signet of Inspiration builds, which I think are justified in pursuing the Signet of Midnight for its 10% boon duration.

Inherent effects aside, when traited properly, I think the signet also has a deserved place in Illusionary Persona builds that rely on getting close into melee range.

(Other “Know Your Skills”: Phantasmal Defender )

5 Cultural Pieces. A mix of the firstborn, nightshade, and evergreen sets. I didn’t like any of the cultural head pieces though, so I kept with leather mask. I think it works fine and keeps with the fact that he’s an engineer. I’m up for suggestions though.

The important thing for me was to find a way to make the fervid censor blend well into an outfit for a male character. Turns out it also works well with the Teq back piece.