Guild Wars 2

I’m all for abilities hitting hard … if they have a bloody telegraph :-p

You won’t see me complaining if a Warrior nails me with Eviscerate … I deserve every bit of damage I take in that instance.

I still don’t understand why MtD needed to be nerfed, but I’m seeing thieves drop people in Settler’s gear from 100% to downed in less than 2 seconds

… and the only Thief changes I’ve seen are “Sorry, we didn’t mean for you to be penalized like everyone else when you miss … don’t be revealed when you flub your backstab. Go and prosper little Thief.”

… which, to add insult to injury for warriors … was done at the same time warriors received a change that says “Sorry, you missed your burst skill, so this GM trait is not going to give you +%dmg … on top of CLeansing Ire not cleansing you … because it’s important that you not miss with key skills”

… I don’t understand the seeming lack of consistent logic.

All you have to do is stand in it 0.5s after you cast it and it works the same … actually better.

Traited, it lasts longer and you can get quite a large amount of regen.

If I stand in one full Healing Spring, I get almost a minute of Regen … which is awesome with Oakheart Salve.

Looks like another convert to the world of Ranger Moment of Clarity Interrupts :-)

I prefer Greatsword over Longbow due to 3s daze/stun from MoC … more mobility and defenses too.

Heck, on my Ranger in Settler’s at at least 95% hp (so Barkskin was up), I got dropped in less than 2s by a Thief that came from outside my LoS while I was stomping his teammate … couldn’t do anything since basilisk on me and my defensive skills were on cooldown from fighting the guy I was stomping … I think more than sustain is needed against some things.

Yeah, I was at worst at 95% hp in Settler’s gear and a Thief downed me in less than 2s.

Didn’t see him … initial burst with Basilisk keeping me CC’d for that extra second to finish me off … my defensive cooldowns wereon CD from the guy I was about to stomp … but still … under 2s versus Settlers and I had Wilderness Survival and no less than 95% hp … crazy.

Shortbow … your pet taunts … you have at their flank.
Trap … they stand in it because they are taunted by your pet.
Longbow … they aren’t countering your rapid fire because of the taunt.

It’s another CC … so many good uses.

4s Mirror + 2s from Blink … love it. I’m right there with you Jordy.

http://www.gamesprays.com/files/resource_media/preview/fabulous-on-tap-7236_preview.jpg

A Unicorn can kill you with its head (i.e. its horn) … I don’t see the problem.

Yep. That was my experience as well. With so many people running condi builds, that toughness doesn’t mean crap. I just wanted to know about your own. Thanks :-)

@Chaos:
LMAO.

@Zera:
Complainers will complain complain complain :-p

It’s not good enough to be meta.
Now it’s good enough that more people are playing it.

I’m not sure there is a “just right” for some people.

Honestly, if it was explained just once in a logical manner by ArenaNet, I figure many of us would leave it alone … it just never has been and it seems to be this “special exception to the rule” that we all see and have no real reason to think the exception is needed. Heck, if I could re-shatter on my mesmer when I missed … hot dog :-)

@reflexyo:
For the most part, yes.

Sadly, if the meta remains “zerk” … Thief will still do this.

We’ll have to see how the dust settles on this one.

Yep … confusion + glamours was one of the major ones …

Sadly, if they had left it the way it was, we might have seen a far less zerg-driven WvW meta … since a mindless zerg spamming abilities does quite poorly when you apply confusion to them ;-)

I recommend tetrodoxin’s build for power.

For conditions I was running similar but replaced Domination with Illusions and swapped out Greatsword.

Inspiration is so much better now than it was … especially with all the condis.

Lol. I’m just glad that the Clone off-hand weapon fix didn’t break out underwater weapons again this time … maybe the sacrifice of MtD stopped that? :-p

I still can’t to this day understand how in the world they so badly coupled those two parts of their codebase in a way that caused that break back then.

It’s as if someone at ArenaNet didn’t do any [correct] math before they released this latest patch :-p

If they don’t hit anything, great … but when they actually try to backstab someone the attack misses, is blocked, is evaded, etc. … I have no clue why they aren’t revealed … pretty sure I should be able to see you since I just blocked your dagger from hitting my vital organs.

ArenaNet did slip in some other changes without telling anyone … Mesmer mantras start to recharge their cooldown from the time they are either first charged or the first charge is used (I didn’t have enough time to fully test it).

These two make me think “what the heck” …

• Backstab: This will now only apply revealed when you hit a foe.
• Berserker’s Power: You are now required to hit with the burst skill. This will trigger in the same way as the trait Cleansing Ire.

So the Warrior loses all their adrenaline and gets nothing from either of their two GM traits … but the Thief isn’t revealed if they miss their backstab?

Why is it that Warriors (and everyone else) are punished for missing their attack but Thieves are not? I don’t understand why Steal gets to be a special exception to this rule.

• Burst Skill misses/blocked/evaded … full cooldown, all adrenaline consumed
• Shatter Skill misses/blocked/evaded … full cooldown, illusions consumed
• Any skill in the game misses/blocked/evaded … full cooldown (or Initiative still consumed).

But then you have Backstab.

It just seems silly to me that in the same patch notes we’d have ArenaNet making sure the Warrior has to worry more about missing while making it so the Thief doesn’t have to worry as much about missing.

These two make me think “what the heck” …

• Backstab: This will now only apply revealed when you hit a foe.
• Berserker’s Power: You are now required to hit with the burst skill. This will trigger in the same way as the trait Cleansing Ire.

So the poor Warrior loses all their adrenaline and gets nothing from either of their two GM traits … but the Thief isn’t revealed if they miss … really?!

<edit>
Apologies … brainfarted and was thinking about Strength … not arms …

I agree with OP that ARMs has far less in it for a Power build than it does for a Condi build.

For a condi build I think it can be pretty sick … maybe for a hybrid too, but I have yet to try that.

There is some good stuff there for critting against stunned opponents that could be tested out as well … gaining more adrenaline per crit when you are critting more against stunned opponents and your burst skills stun as well as some weapon skills … it could synergize well … just not sure if as well as alternatives … needs to be tested.
</edit>

I haven’t had much trouble with Elementalist yet, but in the little bit of play-time I got last night I didn’t encounter that many Elementalists so perhaps I didn’t run up against a good one.

What makes you think they are our counter?
What build(s) were you running?
Were you able to ascertain what build(s) they were running?

Sadly, you’re probably right … I’m not sure what ArenaNet is doing/thinking … they’ve already nerfed some things less than 24 hours after the patch and left more egregious things alone.

Valk, eh?
Have you tried remorseless with Cavalier?

I enjoyed Merciless Hammer and Berserker’s Power. Two +20% damage modifier if I used a 3-bar burst skill in the last 10 seconds and my target was CC’d. A +10% if my endurance wasn’t full as well. Even more +3% for each boons on them … and boons seem to be flying around like candy.

Nah, there are some counters to the Mesmer … but many of the Mesmers you saw were likely “more veteran” given that there has been more hype about other classes like Engineer. Mesmer can be daunting to those who aren’t familiar with it … more so when you combine that with the new specialization system.

My condi ranger and power ranger were both able to take on various Mesmer builds. Now, I have to give props to one Mesmer though. The name escapes me, but (s)he was running a Sword+Sword & Scepter+Pistol build and man it was good. Had some darn good fights … usually ended with one of us simply disengaging … though (s)he got me in a large team fight.

Fay.2357:

…. there will almost definitely be some blanket nerfs to tone them down. Unfortunately, MtD is going to be forgotten when that happens, and will be even more worthless than ever.

Sadly, this does fit the patterns of the past.
(1) Specific nerf to a Mesmer skill
(2) Broad-stroke nerf to mechanic that Mesmer skill fell under … without reverting the first nerf or accounting for it

If you’re running a glassy (zerk) build, Thieves can be an issue (especially if they 2v1 you) … they have more access to %dmg/%cri_dmg modifiers now … and don’t have to trait to get extra power.

I was playing around with all sorts of my characters and my best results were my condi-ranger and condi-mesmer. My power-mesmer got insta-gibbed by a thief that came from outside my line-of-sight … wasn’t cool.

Thanks for clearing that up, Heibi.

No worries. We all have that moment from time to time where we see something and think “that doesn’t seem right”.

I appreciate that you took the time to follow-up and “manned-up” to say “hey, sorry, I was wrong”.

I’ll take any player with good character any day over a pro player with bad character … you can’t teach good character. Kudos.

@Heimskarl:
Aye, it was great to use against two squishy thieves … they attacked my bird while blind and weak … I made them bleed, burn, and poisoned them … I like to share :-)

I agree. It was changed prematurely. I also don’t think it was warranted … though have had less than a day to playtest it … but I see far worse things now in-game than 1 to 4 extra stacks of Torment per shatter.

The only silver lining I can see is that MtD no longer competes with IP … so, if they keep this nerf, the trait may not go back to being useless like it did when it was a GM in the only trait system … but I think Might on shatter might have it beat in most scenarios.

I agree that the playerbase wasn’t given enough time to test it. I’m pretty sure the dust hadn’t even had time to be fully stirred … let alone settle.

Let a meta form, Let people experiment.

+1

Forum bug … wish that had been “fixed” instead of MtD … we’ve at least had more time to “playtest” the forum bug :-p

@Windwalker:
Lol, aye at the 20/20.

Yep. I was wrong about calling it a knee-jerk reaction. Apologies.

I still think acting like a rage-filled teenager is dumb … and it accomplished nothing.

The child that always whines will be ignored as opposed to the calmer child who won’t be ignored when they whine because it’s an actual change.

Constantly griping about everything ruins the signal-to-noise ratio.

@Pyro
Let’s be clear about a difference. MtD was not nerfed for several hours. There was hard evidence of it seen by all. Heck, it was still not nerfed when I got off work and finally put the kids to bed. The claim that the devs were going to nerf it had 0 hard evidence until they actually did it … unless you count word-of-mouth as hard evidence.

I don’t agree with the change, but perhaps we’ll still see MtD used since it no longer competes with IP for a trait slot. That does make this slightly different than With the new system, it only competes with 1 Might per illusion shattered or +20% attack speed for phantasms. That’s a bit more of a toss-up; will have to look at the math for various scenarios to see what is “optimal”. My intuition is that the Might is better given that you already have some other conditions on the target and/or after some additional other hits while that Might is on you.

This is going in the list of things ArenaNet has done that don’t make much sense to me. I don’t see why we weren’t given more time to playtest it and I don’t see why some other things that I saw more outcry over in map chat (and some people whispering me to ask “wth”) about other things like Thief burst … but anyone who can do addition saw that one coming.

Both worked fine for me. It’s amusing as all heck to spam it.

Just tested [Go for the Eyes] and [Wilting Strike] in the mists with an eagle.
Every F2 it applies both Weakness and Blind.

Woot!

@Curunen:
Posts like yours (yes, I went back through the thread and looked at them) possibly did.

The hate-filled garbage that some others spewed … I highly doubt did anything but have any dev that read them think “there (s)he goes again” and roll their eyes.

Some people need to realize that the person that fusses about everything is often ignored when they fuss as opposed to the calmer person who doesn’t tilt at every windmill.

Overall, I miss some of our Mesmer streamers who would have said “Well, that looks like it will suck. Here’s why I think so. Now let’s man-up, move on, and see what we can do anyways”.

@Curunen:
I’m horribly confused why you’re having such an issue with this …

I didn’t ever call out any of your posts … in fact yours were far more reasonable than others.

“teen agnst” was directed at Pyro, not you … due to his post history here … not just recent.

I’m confused that you feel the need to state how long you’ve been here given that no one has claimed anything about your time here or your memory.

Overall, I’m just confused by your post … it’s like you’re taking everything said to anyone and redirecting it yourself and replying to that … you’re a Mesmer, not an iDefender ;-)

@Fay:
Claiming that no one has shown evidence is not saying that it didn’t happen. The rest of your logic is taking “leaps” … it’s sorely lacking.

Stating “wait and see” is not denying that it will ever happen. It is saying “stop being a rage filled child and see if it actually happens”.

You can continue to try to play with words, but your post history and banned account are both there as great, concrete facts about who you are and what you do.

I refuse to have a battle of wits with an unarmed man. Continue being proud of your tantrums over things real and imagined.

Don’t forget that Null Field and Feedback can also be used with Leaps (or our own blast) to gain Chaos Armor … which works well with Chaotic Dampening and Staff.

If you look at the patch notes … several other classes are affected by it as well.

If you look at those same patch notes, you should notice that this also means that Cripple/Chill won’t reduce the distance traversed by those skills.

You lose something and you gain something. What that does to Warrior meta is yet to be seen, but it is supposed to be consistent across the board.

It also brings consistency between such abilities and teleports … as neither now has their range increased/decreased by movespeed bonuses/penalties.

No one has provided any solid evidence that it was nerfed … so don’t go jumping the gun.

If someone can provide:

• Weapon strength
• Power A
• Power B
• Damage A
• Damage B

We can check the coefficient.

Just to be clear… the normalization of the movement on weapon skills to no longer be affected by movespeed is what is making you feel slow now … correct?

@MailMail:
I don’t disagree. If someone had shown a screenshot of the chat there’d be less to talk about, but I still think the behaviour of some was ridiculous … and I think that screenshot would still have warranted a “let’s see if they actually do it before we go burning down the town”.

The only nice thing I can say about the behaviour is that “I’ve seen worse.” … but that’s not really much :-/

@Fay (Pyroatheist):
So you are allowed to just assume that I called someone a liar and that makes it the same as me calling someone a liar? <sarcasm> Well, while we’re using logic … </sarcasm>

“Good memory unlike me?” You have no clue about my memory … which recalls things like ANet fixing Mesmer OH Weapons showing on clones made our underwater weapons not function at all … remember that one from the first months the game was out?

How about how Temporal Curtain and Veil used to be able to stack … even by running through the same one multiple times … but that got nerfed while Guardian symbols went from only refreshing the boon duration to stacking it …

Memory is working just fine … just like how you’re primarily known for being Pyroatheist, the creator of the Immortal Mesmer build … which ArenaNet killed quite a while back. How you’re now known for your knowledge of Mesmer history … despite the fact that there are plenty of us still around that know it too … just don’t boost ourselves because we don’t feel the need to.

The fact that you feel justified in your actions is what I’m horribly disappointed in.

• Would it have been so hard to “wait and see” ?
• Would it have been so hard to just express that you don’t think making such a change would be a good idea … instead of all that extra garbage that was spewed?
• Is it so hard to see how you just acted like a little hate-filled teenager who found a new outlet?

As far as specializations, your complaints were far more than about the shield … you were complaining that we’d get nothing even before any information was out. That we’d not get IP baseline … that Shield abilities would do no damage … and so on … and were wrong on all counts.

I grow tired of teen angst. It got your last account banned yet you still haven’t learned.

@messiah:
Good point. Burning per hit is now down. However, burning now stacks. So:

• Scenario: 1 WoC applies burning … weaker than before
• Scenario: 2 WoC each apply burning … dependent on condition damage
• Scenario: 3 WoC each applying burning … stronger than before

So while we had damage taken away from a single instance of burning, we had more “burst potential” given with the other hand from multiple instances of burning.

Given that the opponents we care about are the good players that know when the cleanse, I think this might be superior as rather than getting longer burning duration we get more stacks of burning.

You could be right though and it be worse and possibly an oversight on ANet’s part.

@Fay:
First, don’t say I said things that I have not at all said …

• Not once did I say the devs did/didn’t say it … just that no one has provided any concrete evidence.
• Not once have I used the words “lie”, “liar”, “lying”, nor any synonym thereof.
• Not once have I said that MtD will never be nerfed.

Second, these are the facts … you can try to twist them all you want…

• Was there hard-evidence that it was being done? Nope.
• Was there even hard-evidence that it was said? Nope.
• Did people, despite the lack of hard-evidence, flip out? Yep.
• Did people only have to wait less than 24 hours to find out if there was a reason to flip out or not? Yep.
• Did players on the forum complain about ArenaNet making “knee-jerk reactions” when, in fact, it was players on the forum making “knee-jerk reactions” to what they were told? Yep.

I can’t help but think that you don’t like these facts being called out due to yourself being one of the most vocal. A simple search of Fay.2357 on this thread shows this.

Is it really that hard to admit that you reacted far too quickly and harshly? That your words/actions were unwarranted?

Heck, this is just like back before we learned what we were getting from the specializations and you were all negative-nancy about it … and lo and behold, you were wrong again … and still wouldn’t admit it … just ignored it. Heck, look back and you’ll see all the times Chaos and I pointed out to you that “if we get it, we’ll remind you” … I even got him on one … but he was gracious enough to joke back with me about it. He showed good character.

@Happicakes
Not once did I call you or anyone a liar. I simply do not believe these things unless someone provides actual proof. Till then I simply think, “well, maybe it’s true”.

As far as my signature … yes, people should learn from this mistake they just made and not have such violent knee-jerk reactions to hearsay. I’m most disappointed in seeing that not only did people behave as such but now they aren’t even admitting to having even possibly done anything close to “wrong” / “unwarranted” / etc.

@Curunen:
I never said that you specifically did anything … read again.

I don’t think I’m better than any of you. Why does pointing out a mistake automatically mean I’m trying to say I’m better than you? That’s some horrible [lack of] logic.

I do think that I and others did behave better than others with regard to this thread. If you’d like to disagree, then please tell me how people throwing fits over this thread was “better” than saying “let’s wait and see since we don’t see any hard evidence”.

If you think it’s still “with Mesmer, always expect the worst”, then get over there with Pyroatheist (Fay) who was being like that before the specializations and chronomancer and was horribly wrong about practically everything he said.

• Has mesmer been nerfed? Yep.
• Have other classes been nerfed? Yep.
• Has mesmer been buffed? Yep.
• Have other classes been buffed? Yep.
• Has mesmer received changes that don’t make sense to the playerbase? Yep.
• Have other classes received changes that don’t make sense to the playerbase? Yep.

Welcome to MMOs. This stuff has been happening in them for over about 2 decades.

Which leads me to my next point … so many times in the past month I’ve been in the Mesmer subforum and felt like I was in the Thief subforum …

… it makes me sad.

… it makes me horribly disappointed in the current Mesmer community. It used to be better than this.

I highly doubt that they made a code change and then reverted it in that less than 24 hour span because of the torches and pitchforks here.

If you want to talk about high-and-mighty … the entitlement and angry outburst shown by the forum despite nothing truly concrete … and then showing no regret/remorse for that behavior after being shown that there was no reason for it.

But, that’s fine, if you think you never do any wrong, that’s your own issue to deal with … I only have to roll my eyes at the product of it on the occasional forum post.

Just to be clear, I wasn’t directing that at you skcamow. Yours was just the post confirming that MtD was still 2 stacks of torment per illusion shattered.

Honestly, I think many of the posters in the mesmer forum owe some apologies … some harsh/dumb thing were said and horribly unwarranted

skcamow.3527:

Patch just hit – still 2 stacks per shatter. Good, hopefully it stays that way for the time being and they can evaluate. Also confusing combatants change to fury is real (EDIT: now called Master Fencer).

So, basically … it was what I said earlier …

There was no proof and people got out their torches and pitchforks for nothing.

Funny how that worked out, eh? :-p

Let’s not all now go “oh, good, they decided to not …”.

Let’s be honest … many people had knee-jerk reactions to word-of-mouth … with no hard evidence.

This thread has been an excellent example of the sort of thing the forums don’t need and probably why we see less interaction from the devs in the forums than we did when the game first launched.

Because I don’t want to waste a trait on falling damage when I don’t need it. So make it an adept and I can select it when I want it and replace it with something else when I don’t but want that same Specialization.

Speed of what? It doesn’t specify. Fast Hands is some speedy weapon swapping. Greatsword provides some nice movement speed. Greatsword’s Hundred Blades also shows some speedy bladework.

Let’s go to some other class description:

• Engineer: They can take control of an area by placing turrets … until everyone griped and it got nerfed hard.
• Necromancer: Necromancers feed on life force, which they can use to bring allies back from the brink … Necromancers don’t use Life Force to rez allies.
• Ranger: With traps, nature spirits, and a stable of loyal pets at their command, rangers can adapt to any situation. … except large scale events / zergs … where spirits and pets don’t do much beyond die to stray AOEs/cleaves
• Guardian: True guardians are brilliant tacticians and selfless defenders who know when to sacrifice their own defenses to empower their allies to achieve victory. … except Guardians don’t really sacrifice their defenses to empower their allies … they just empower their allies.

Gaining a passive 25% movespeed from a trait or utility makes another class a mini warrior, then I believe you don’t have a clue what makes Warrior what it is.

I think you are far too caught up on a class description quite likely written by a non-developer, non-designer back before the game was even released.

… or you are using it as your one crutch to try to still argue this “point” of yours …

I wasn’t saying it would be required (an absolute).
I was saying it could be required (a possibility).

If swap sigils are already balanced around being used half as much by other as they are by warriors, then no work is required in that area. This is possible given how Warriors have been making use of swap sigils with Fast Hands for quite some time and it hasn’t received any real spotlight from the devs (at least not that I’m aware of).

I just don’t want to rule it out as that would be an assumption. I offer it up as a possibility as that is what it is; something that might possibly need tweaking due to baseline Fast Hands.

Now, if I was to operate under assumptions … then …
Assuming (1) Warrior is already balanced around having Fast Hands, (2) Swap Sigils are balanced around Warrior being able to use them twice as much, and (3) ArenaNet only made Illusionary Persona baseline for the reason stated in the livestream (auto-include in viable builds) … then …

… I see no reason why Fast Hands should not be baselined as it fits the logic provided by ArenaNet for baselining Illusionary Persona and it would be less work to baseline it than it would be to remove it from the game.

All clear now?