Guild Wars 2

I am posting this on behalf of my Fiance since her account has now been successfully commandeered and has no access to the forums.

So far this is where she stands; She has submitted an anonymous support ticket, posted to reddit and followed up to both in the last hour. Her account had issues back at the end of november. We changed the password had the account set back before the hacker had taken it, received a new serial code and did (in our opinion) everything that could be done to protect it.

Everything was all well and good until December 24th, when her 2FA had spammed her phone early in the day before she had woken up. She immediately changed the password to both her attached email and gw2 account. She was safe for then. Today at 10am, 5 minutes after she had woken up her 2kittenain had been spammed. This person had figured out again her new password and couldn’t bypass the authenticator.

Immediately she tried to sign on to the gw2 website and her password was incorrect. Trying to reset the password was a moot point. It seemed as if the email had already been changed and even though she still had access to the serial and character names, nothing could be done. Waiting around all day for a reply from support and nothing happened.

She found herself in an odd position where the previous night she had not signed out and still had access in the game while all these authenticator texts were coming in. Therefore whomever was attempting to get in still couldn’t. Now the both of us assume that they currently had a support ticket in to remove the 2FA. The client unfortunately crashed and left her without any access and just more waiting from support. Now the person who has accessed the account has gotten full access and we’re at a loss.

My biggest bafflement of it all is the fact that an account with a flag from a previous hacking issue less than a month ago was so easily turned over to a new email and had the authenticator removed. This game means a great deal to the both of us because this is how we met 3 1/2 years ago. Not only that but the time and financial investment that she has put in is above what most do.

This is devastating and stressful for my fiance. She has no idea what to do or if it can be even saved. Some help, advice, or awareness to the issue would be spectacular.

She posted on reddit 7 hours ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/5klpe7/account_security_issue/ and sent a support ticket over 10 hours ago.

I will preface this by saying this isn’t another page slamming A-Net because they haven’t got anything to talk about regarding Super Adventure Box (SAB). This is a thread that I will hope will allow the developers and the players to find a suitable middle ground for now. So without further ado, I will begin.

So how are we to find a middle ground? A-Net clearly don’t have anything to announce in terms of SAB but what they do have is the original content, just sitting on a server somewhere, getting dusty (figuratively speaking). Many players would love SAB to come back in any form or fashion possible with new content added as a bonus. I think you can see what I am getting at here.

What if SAB worlds 1 and 2 were brought back as a ‘festival’ at a suitable time?

How feasible is this to do for A-Net and how would the player base feel about this? Personally, I would be more than pleased with this knowing that nothing new was possible in the time frame. Many players have yet to experience SAB, myself included so just getting Worlds 1 and 2 back, I feel would satisfy many players.

But lets think of logistics for A-Net and benefits to the players:

Logistics for A-Net:

• Put the SAB files back into the client
• Pick a time to bring it back
• Add a festival icon to the map and make the achievements attainable again
• Get Moto to write a message to all players informing them SAB is open for further testing. (This one might be problematic, I am sure Moto is very busy!)

Benefits for Players

• Newer players get to experience SAB for the first time
• Older players get to try and complete achievements they missed the first time
• Gives players something to do after they have finished with Living Story Episodes
• Allows people another chance at getting the Tribulation mode skins

Personally, I think this is a suitable middle ground for both A-Net and Players alike. If I was to suggest a ‘suitable time’ for it to return, what better time than just following the feature pack, before Living Story continues. The theme could be ‘Back to School’, like last year and the reason for Moto’s reopening could be as simple as more testing is required before any new worlds are opened.

What does everyone think? Would this be satisfactory and more importantly, would you play it?

Thanks for reading and any thoughts on the subject are more than welcome.

BrunoBRS.5178:

illusionary leap, swap, cast mantra on node, half your party has fury and might and half the enemy party has confusion and vulnerability, phase retreat.

low cooldown skills that allow you to safely rotate in and out to cast the mantra. heck, just roll into the fray and phase retreat out again if you’re stuck on staff for another 10 seconds.

When you look at it that way it seems pretty good but maybe it would make some PU players take another look at their build. There are far too many Mesmers playing PU these days…

But even if it was toned all the way down to 2 stacks of might and fury and 2 stacks of vuln and the AoE to allies removed, this would much worse than our other elites. Mass Invis would still be king as PU wouldn’t be persuaded to change, and the builds that want to run Moa will still run Moa because of its utility. The same is true in PvE; Time Warp would give much higher DPS than the mantra…

I am mainly a PvE player so I really don’t know what would happen to PvP if this was put in the game. For PvE I am fairly confident it is on a similar power level to Time Warp and would see use if parties can’t maintain 25 might and perma-fury. The vuln it gives is always useful as well as you will rarely be capped on vulnerability during fights. For WvW it might see use over Time Warp due to the reduced cooldown in Zerg fights. Mass Invis would still be better when roaming however. When I came up with the idea, I will be honest, I didn’t really put much thought into PvP as I don’t feel I know that game well enough :p

What would you change to balance it in PvP?

BrunoBRS.5178:

your mantra is also AoE and applies confusion on top of vulnerability, which hits hard regardless of condi damage.

Fair enough, but the AoE radius is pretty small (240) so unless you are in melee range the vuln and confusion are not likely to proc. On top of that, the might and fury to allies will also only proc if you are stacking in a dungeon or if you are on a node with support in PvP. As I said in the original post, its just an idea but I think in principal, a Mantra Elite skill is perfectly reasonable. Maybe it needs toning down a little but I don’t think it is on par with some other elite skills in the game.

BrunoBRS.5178:

i’d think an elite that can be insta-cast 3 times would be a bit OP…

Well there is a 10 second cooldown between each use so its not exactly spammable. On top of that, you have to be running Harmonious Mantras to get the 3rd charge, which would mean going 6 into Dueling.

Personally I don’t think this is a problem considering a Warriors Signet of Rage gives 30 seconds of Fury, Swiftness and 5 stacks of Might, on a 42 second cooldown when traited. On top of that it also gives the warrior a big adrenaline boost (useful when trying to cap it for a big Eviscerate for example). In contrast, my idea gives 3 stacks of Might + Fury + Vuln for 30 seconds (if used one after another and traited) on a 45 second cooldown after 2 charges have been used.

Error code: 7:11:3:191:101

ISP: BT
Region: United Kingdom (but play on US region)
Server: Tarnished Coast

Can’t log into a character that logged off in Cursed Shore. Also can’t log in to a character that was left in Lions Arch. I can log into my 2 other characters (lvl 32 warrior and level 2 Ele left in Divinities Reach and HotM respectively. Interestingly enough, When i ported the Warrior into Lions Arch the load was successful. However after re-logging, I can no longer log into that char either. The load seems to hang when MapLoadState: STATE_AGENT_STREAM. Both MapLoadCompletion and ModelLoadCompletion hit 100% much faster than usual however the load will just hang until it times out. Something else to note is the information about number of unlocked waypoints/points of interest/vistas doesn’t show up in an unsuccessful load.

This issue has persisted through multiple restarts of both my PC, and the router. I have also performed a repair on the client and used the -prefreset argument on launch as well. I disabled firewall, antivirus and ran as admin as well, all with no success.

Thanks, hope this gets sorted out soon

Now you show me the numbers, Time Warp seems like a better option still for parties, however solo play is where I would see this shining. Giving Mesmers some fury I think is much needed.

I think it would come down to how sustained the fight is going to be and how long have you got before you may want Time Warp again. for example CoE explorable. You will use Time Warp at the champ wolf, but you also want it for the first Subject Alpha. Normally it is not off cd by then so you need to make a decision. For those situations, especially if the party is lacking might/vuln/fury, I would prefer to take the Mantra (use one charge and keep the 4% dps increase or use both if the fight won’t last longer than 20 secs).

And yes, I understand completely about the bug fixes, but lets not make this another ‘fix mesmer plox’ thread :P

Esplen.3940:

Time Warp would still be better for party play, but it’s interesting to see some actual Fury generation.

Honestly, this would only be ran and held for the 4% damage bonus.

I think it would depend on the party comp. If a party has trouble hitting max stacks of might/fury/vuln, maybe this is a better option than Time Warp, especially considering the 4% DPS gain over the entire fight. Maybe I am just undervaluing Time Warp though…

If you want the philosophy start here, if you just want the new skill you can skip the text :P

So there has been some discussion around the forums for the addition of new elite skills as many professions really only have 1 viable skill to use in that slot. I have come up with a new elite skill for Mesmer that I believe fits thematically with what we are all about, while providing a usable alternative than our current ‘best in slot’ option, ‘Time Warp’, for many situations.

Something many of the Meta builds (for PvE) rely on is the Empowering Mantras grandmaster trait. These builds typically run between 2 and 4 mantras on their utility bar, depending on what other utilities they may need for the current situation. So what sort of elite skill would help in that situation; a Mantra. This raises the issue of, how to make the mantra feel like an elite skill. Mantras typically have 2.75 second cast times, 2 instant cast charges providing small but useful effects, with 1 to 5 second cooldowns between charge uses, and between a 20 and 30 second overall cooldown before you can ready the mantra again. So how do you make this feel elite? Well, increase the overall cooldown is a start, make the effect more powerful and perhaps a longer time between charge uses would also help. Here is what I have come up with:

Mantra of Strength (Name work in progress)
Cast time: 2.75 seconds
2 charges
Cooldown: 45 seconds

Sequences to Unleash Chaos (Name also work in progress)
Grant 3 stacks of might and Fury for 10 seconds to allies and 3 stacks of Vulnerability and Confusion for 10 seconds to enemies
Radius: 240
Number of Targets: 5
Cooldown: 10 seconds

I believe this complements many of the meta builds quite nicely, while providing a good alternative to Time Warp that thematically fits with the sort of effects that Mantras provide. Personally, I like to think of Mantras as a Mesmers alternative so shouts. For example:
Mantra of Concentration = Stand your Ground
Mantra of Resolve = Shake it off
Mantra of distraction = Fear me?

Mantras provide, for the most part, AoE party buffs in a small radius, much like shouts but they require more work, as you would expect for Mesmer.

Thanks for taking a look, feel free to post your own ideas below. What do you think? Is this too overpowered/underpowered. What would you change? Would a Mesmer running 5 mantras with Empowered Mantras be too strong? Let me know.

Thanks for putting this together Frifox! Lets hope this gets some dev attention.

I absolutely agree. This thread has gotten way off topic with people just complaining about lack of changes in every release notes.

If we are to get anything done, I think we need to just start again with a clean slate that clearly identifies all the known bugs and perhaps runs a poll (straw-poll will do) to establish a community driven priority list. This would go a long way to helping the devs identify which bugs are the most game breaking to us.

Suggestions on Mesmer Role, and Potential Improvements:

Firstly lets go over Mesmer Ideology, and where I see it from a PvE perspective, focusing on dungeons. I have little experience with PvP and WvW and therefore I don’t want to comment on the role there.

With respect to dungeon groups, a Mesmer should provide the group with great utility, and the best projectile mitigation in the game through reflects.

As far as utility goes, with our great boon stripping, party wide stealth and good crowd control, I feel the Mesmer does this well.
However the current issue with Mesmers is with our reflects. Our reflecting capabilities seem to be constantly getting worse due to changes to boss mechanics, making many projectiles un-reflectable. It is near impossible to work out which bosses have reflectabe projectiles anymore, let alone remember which ones do. At best this results in a loss in potential DPS, at worst, it wipes the party because they relied on the reflect working.
On top of this, the April 15th Feature Patch included an unlisted change that moved one of our best Grandmaster traits, ‘Empowering Mantra’s’ from Dueling, to Domination. This change meant maintaining good Critical Chance while being able to take Wardens Feedback (4 into Inspiration) was now near impossible. These changes In my opinion have only reduced the Mesmers potential. It would be nice to see a clarification on why this change was made.

In addition, there are several pretty serious bugs with Mesmers that haven’t been addressed. There is a very long post on the bug fixing forums detailing all the bugs that exits for Mesmer, most of these have yet to be acknowledged, let alone fixed.

Link to Forum Post:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Mesmer-s-Bugged-Skills-Still-Piling-Up/first

I appreciate that Mesmer is one of the least played professions and therefore receives less attention than other professions, however something needs to be done, even if it is just fixing some of the bugs.

I appreciate this post is a little longer than 300 words so if you made it to the end, thanks for reading!

Hi,

Can I get an invite please.

Thanks a lot,