Guild Wars 2

Thanks McKenna Berdrow. I appreciate it.

Hello,

Just this evening, and also on reset night, I’ve had a dolyak get stuck just at Garrison that was coming from NE camp. This was in the Alpine Borderland.

This is an obvious problem. I added Speedy Dolyaks and Invuln yaks and still the Dolyak was stuck.

Please fix.

Thank you,

Serial Experiments

Hi Sviel,

I’m in SoS. I played against Maguuma last week in tier 3 and I saw what you’re talking about. I attached a screenshot of it. In the screenshot, you can see Maguuma put down 4 rams on Ogre Watch and then 2 shield gens to the left and 2 shield gens to the right. It was quite absurd. I, as a single player, couldn’t counter this alone. But, if I had 2 other players with me on defense, willing to stealth and disable, I believe I could. This assumes pugs would be on Arrow Carts spamming down on the Flame Rams.

To bring this back to the main point “Shield Gens should not be able to shield themselves.” I disagree with this. By shielding themselves, Shield Generators prevent themselves from taking arrow cart damage. They can still be disabled by using a disabler since a Shield Generator can’t lay a bubble which stops itself from getting disabled (due to an aoe throw mentioned in my previous post). I think this is acceptable counterplay. I like that Shield Generators can prevent Arrow Cart damage. Arrow Cart spam can become absurd.

The double shield generator with alacrity on them for unlimited uptime, can be countered. You can actually just throw the siege disabler on the outside of the shield generator bubble so that the AoE can affect the shield gens. This one act will shut down the entire setup. It’s the achilles heel.

I’ve attached a picture showing it. The black squares are shield gens. The orange squares are catas/rams. The red circle is disabler range, and the red dot is where you throw the disabler.

Ideally, once you disable the shield gens, you’re going to want your teammates on those Arrow Carts putting pressure on their now-exposed siege. Otherwise, stopping the shield gens won’t matter all that much. Take this 35 seconds to kill the shield gens with siege.

I’m glad there’s already a thread for this. I came here specifically to make mention of this. A huge amount of my blinks on my mesmer are no longer valid. This is really going to affect my gameplay. I have spent hours in these maps, running around, looking for blink-able locations. I don’t look forward to attempting a portal bomb, trying a blink, and dying because it doesn’t work.

Anyways, I’d very much like to know if this was intentional.

Anet had taken measures with the release of HoT to make hiding inside keeps (except SMC) harder. Anyone within a certain range of the keep after it has been captured is revealed (doesn’t apply to towers). This effect lasts for 5 minutes. However, if you manage to break into Outer or Inner of a Keep and hide a mesmer there, you can get away with "ninja"ing the keep at a later time. This seems fair to me. The group DID have to knock down an entrance WITH siege for this to happen.

There are issues though:
- Some places within Keeps don’t give you the Reveal effect. This allows for someone to hide there.
- A mesmer can abuse portals to make an everlasting portal entre within a keep, outside of the reveal range.

Based on Anet’s implementation of the Reveal effect, I assume these mechanics weren’t intended.

I get that this change might be miniscule to others, but I use portals all the time. And when I’m in the most stressful positions, I sometimes accidentally hit my #6 skill (Portal) twice within a second. I’m so grateful for the following change:

Portal Exeunt: This skill now has a 1-second recharge after Portal Entre is used.

Thanks for this QoL change to Portals, anet people.

Serial Experiments

Hello Devs,

This issue is with the skill Mimic and its effect, Echo. I normally experience this when running Veil with Mimic in WvW. The issue is that when I use Mimic, and then use Veil, Veil is recharged in 1 second, BUT if I change that 1-second-recharged Veil to another skill, that skill has a massive recharge.

To replicate:
1) Equip Mimic
2) Equip Veil in separate utility slot
3) Use Mimic
4) Within 9 seconds of activating Mimic, use Veil
5) Wait 1 second for Veil to recharge
6) Change the utility slot which Veil is in to something else (i.e., Portal)

Experience a recharge on that new skill.

Video of Bug: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-mmKwC_Y-I

Thanks

Embolism.8106:

Serial Experiments.5407:

In WvW, I look at the clock on the top of the screen. Also, I normally have http://onlineclock.net/ on my other monitor in case we’re in between ticks.

Yeah but the UI should tell us this info. We shouldn’t have to jump through hoops to keep track.

I agree entirely.

In WvW, I look at the clock on the top of the screen. Also, I normally have http://onlineclock.net/ on my other monitor in case we’re in between ticks.

So I haven’t seen this performed very often as I spend time in WvW. I also checked these forums and the subreddit for posts referring to these two skills used in conjunction, and found nothing. However, if this has already been posted, excuse me.

I play WvW mostly. I like to play classes which can bring a lot to the table. I find Mesmer to be one of these. Not only with their unique abilities to Portal Bomb the enemy, or allow the entire Zerg to go stealth for 4 seconds with a Veil, but with their ability to hide “in” a tower for 5 minutes after it has been captured to allow the Zerg to stop-on-by and recapture it.

Most Mesmers sit in a tower for 5 minutes. This is dangerous and ineffective. Sweepers are looking for Mesmers, especially their red tags above their name. Their portals? Not so much. He’s how to stay “in” a tower after it has been recaptured.

Traits. Firstly, it’s important to the have the trait that recharges Manipulation skills and also the trait that allow Glamours to last 2 seconds longer, as well as PU, which doubles the length of the stealth.

Utilities. Portal, Blink (your choice), Mimic. Elite. Mass Invisibility.

Method Summarized. The whole trick is never staying inside the tower without stealth, just leaving a portal there is plenty enough. To do this, Mimic is used to recharge Portal in 1 second. When going through portals back into the tower, stealth will be used to ensure that you’re not seen placing the new Portal and also to allow you to re-escape to a safe place outside the tower.

Method Nitty-Gritty Here’s the facts: Entry Portals last for 60 seconds before the Exit Portal is required. Mimic work on the Exit Portal, not the Entry Portal. Portal’s recharge is 72 seconds. Mimic’s recharge is 72 seconds. This leads to the question: How do I keep a constant portal when the portal placement time expires before Mimic’s recharge? This is done by getting the absolute most out of your timings. Here’s how:

Mimic is used 49 seconds after the Portal Entry is laid down. Mimic last for 10 seconds, which means you have until 59 seconds of the Portal’s 60 seconds to use it and get the advantage of a 1 second recharge time due to Mimic. Why use Mimic at 49 seconds after the Portal Entry was used? Simple. To start it’s recharge time. We’ve just saved 9 seconds of Mimic’s recharge, bringing it down to 63 seconds.

Ok, next step. The Portal itself lasts for 10 seconds. So we’re going to wait 9 seconds before entering it. We want to spend as much possible time in the safe area outside the tower as to avoid dying and to allow Mimic to recharge as much as possible. After 9 seconds have past, we’re going to enter the Portal. At this point, Mimic has recharged 9 more seconds, putting it at 54 seconds. This isn’t quite good enough. Consider that we’re using Mimic 11 seconds before our Portal is used, meaning we need at least a 48 seconds recharge time on it. So now we need to survive within the enemy tower for ~5 seconds. Well, this is simple. Remember how we waited 9 seconds before entering the Portal? This time here can be used to prepare yourself for a (possibly hot) entry. I prefer to do 3 things before going into a tower:
1) Drop a Focus 4 (temporal curtain) to give yourself swiftness.
2) Use Torch 4 (The prestige) to give yourself 6 seconds to stealth.
3) Find some sort of neutral animal to cast 3 clones/phantasms on so that you can get 4 seconds of distortion right before you enter the portal. This neutralizes all CC effects, marks, traps, etc. that are laid on the portal.

Once you enter the tower, stare at your Mimic’s recharge time. If you see it at 47 seconds or less, go ahead and drop your new portal and leave the tower. Run away. Don’t get caught. However, remember that in 49-seconds-time you need to be casting your Mimic again, not using any utilities in those next 9 seconds, then using your Portal Exit. Just rinse-and-repeat from here.

I should add that this isn’t normally necessary after a sweep has been done. If no one found a Mesmer on inner Keeps, it isn’t uncommon that they move into outer to check that. If they never saw your Portal, you can just Portal back in and stay on inner. Here is a clip of me doing just that on Bay: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGc1JZRbz3I

Sometimes the portal is spotted and the enemy will camp it constantly, here is an example of that and how to counter it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLESZHdJhTg

- Serial Experiments

(I also posted this to the subreddit for more exposure)

I was doing a dungeon earlier and realized something about the mantras functionality that I don’t think existed previously (at what time, I can’t state for sure). So, apparently, mantras start their recharge (aka. cooldown) after their first use, whether they have 2 or 3 charges. This means, if you have the 3-use mantra trait and cast your healing mantra, you can discharge 1 heal right away and leave the other 2 sitting in your status bar, ready to be used. When you use those 2 charges, as long as the 10 second recharge for that mantra has passed since your use of the first charge, your “prepare-mantra” skill will now be charged.

Is this how mantra are suppose to work, and I never noticed, or is this new functionality of the mechanic?

Thanks,

Serial

Moving away from it?

Representing Mesmers here I played a monk for 5k hours in GW1 and LOVE to support other players. Also, I love to run dungeons. I consider myself support more than anything. I don’t go glass-cannon- I’m actually quite the opposite. Since I’m learning every dungeon and have started to know what I can and can not do, I frequently tank the mobs. I also do the following:

I’m always the first person on someone who is down. The second they go down, it’s Mirror Image, Phase Retreat, jump to them with Blink, and start to get them up. The reason for the 3x clones is F4 Distortion for 3 seconds if I get attacked while reviving them. If they’re in a mob, I’ll pull the mob away with Temporal Curtain, and lay a Chaos Field on them- maybe even my AoE Weakness as well (Radiation Field).

But besides reviving people,

Grouping foes. This provides quick kills for my team. I have a good understanding of the pull function of Temporal Curtain. I’ll group the foes together against a wall, then Swap (Sword #3), which’ll Immobilize them and jump me to them. After I’ve immobilized, I Freeze them by swapping weapons (Superior Sigil of Hydromancer), then lay down my AoE Weakness Asuran Skill.

And of course the other mesmer benefits,

- Portals to skip Dungeon Traps (i.e. CoF, Arah)
- Time Warp
- Temportal Curtain for group swiftness
- Veil + Mass Invisibility for running in Dungeon (i.e. TA)

What else is there to do in a boss fight once you get your three illusionary Phantasmal Warlocks out? :P