Guild Wars 2

I think it will be impossible for Anet to fix Mirage in time for the expansion release and it will likely always be a bit of a mess in terms of the contradictory design and the overall clunky nature of the spec. However, Anet will pump up numbers, speed up animations and lower CDs and we’ll be able to make something viable out of it for all game modes – it just won’t ever be that…exciting compared to some of the other specs being released.

Mirage:

1) Axe isn’t very fun to use. Needs more finesse and Axe#3 has major pathing issues.

2) Mirage Cloak is really fun and adds lots of trick plays.

3) Ambush window is too small and most of the Ambush skills are too slow and ineffective.

4) Mirage Mirrors don’t do enough to warrant the player actively spawning and grabbing them on the battlefield. They also de-spawn far too quickly!

5) Infinite Horizon needs to be baseline because it means that your clones always evade like you would which could potentially fool a player – the whole point of the spec is to do precisely that after all.

6) Jaunt range is too short – it didn’t feel nice to use.

7) Illusionary Ambush has the same issues as Axe#3 and Mirage Advance seems far too limited for a steal-like ability.

8) A bunch of other things but over the 100 limit already

At present I’m finding the best thing to do is ignore both the Mirror mechanic AND the Ambush attacks. Now I’m basically just regular condi Mes with an axe and another way to safe stomp.

There’s still hope for the class if Anet improve both the Mirrors and Ambushes.

The more time I spend with axe the worse it feels. The auto-attack really is too slow for a melee range condi weapon, axe 2 locking you into an animation is just a death sentence for Mesmer and massive interrupt bait. But it’s Axe 3 which really causes problems for me as it just doesn’t work. I’m not sure where I read it earlier but it really is like the old Illusionary Leap where it feels almost non-functional in a competitive non-flat environment.

Compare Mesmer axe to something like D/D on Spellbreaker and it feels like we’re playing entirely different games. I really hope improvements are made before release because I’m really gutted that Mirage plays like this

The concept is promising and I like that we can chase quite well with this spec in WvW but so much needs improving that it’s difficult to really see what Mirage can offer long-term.

A short evade frame could be fun but I’d prefer for it to just be a far quicker attack.

Right, so.

1) Ambush attack window is far too short.
2) Most Ambush attacks are simply not effective and massively telegraphed. The only decent Ambush skill is sceptre.
3) Axe is far too clunky for something that oozes finesse like Mesmer. Needs more precise attacks and a faster auto-attack chain.
4) Mirage mirrors do not remain in place for long enough, especially as they spawn in often dangerous areas. My Mirage Mirrors are often utterly wasted because attempting to get them within the short spawn time means I would probably die trying to get it. They should remain much longer so Mirages can spread out pockets of survivability for later use. ADVANCED MIRAGE TACTICS
5) Mirage Mirrors probably need some further modification via traits at least because they’re a bit dull currently.
6) Missed opportunity to allow for some group support via the Mirror Mechanic – especially as you often spawn them at range.
7) Jaunt needs a range increase.
8) Self-Deception is too much cost for a single clone.
9) Mirage Mantle needs way more than just Protection for around 2 seconds
10) Speed of Sand needs to have some swiftness added on or we’re going to have another Traveller rune scenario for the next 2-3 years – or people swap back to Chrono a lot.
11) Infinite Horizon should either be baseline or the burst skills for Mirage need to be far more effective.

Overall, the core concept is good, but a lot of tweaking is needed to make it feel less clunky and more deceptive. I don’t think this elite specialisation is there yet.

Yeah this is so much weaker than I was expecting. There’s going to be some massive buffs in certain areas.

I imagine it will very much depend on the Mirage Cloak skills for sword and GS. I’m hoping the sword is something with a nice spike at least.

sorayuki.8906:

While we’re on the topic, could someone explain to me how a 15,528 critical Vault is possible ? ( See screen shot )

My Vault usually hits for 9-10K but I have got to 14-15K with some Might and vuln stacking once before.

Refia Montes.3205:

Simonoly.4352:

Refia Montes.3205:

Pretty sure Ineptitude is a lot better than Mistrust. From Mistrust you only had 1 condition and can be condi cleansed easily, now you have two conditions and Blind is a pretty strong condition too. Also it compliments well with Blinding Dissipation, so just shattering you can immediately get a blind and 2 stacks of confusion.

Well I just dropped a Gravity well on a group and got 4 interrupts. Usually that would be 16 stacks of AoE confusion onto the four people within range of each other. But with this new trait it was, err, 2 stacks each and a blind. It feels a lot worse.

Yeah it does feel worse when you’re playing against someone that doesn’t have condi clear and stability.

Yeah makes me sad. Happened again just now, 7 consecutive interrupts on a clustered group – it would have been chaos and very fun. I guess I just have to move on or play chill Necro (eww) for mass condi spread.

Klipso.8653:

Condi wins with far less effort.

This hasn’t been true for about 2 years now.

Refia Montes.3205:

Pretty sure Ineptitude is a lot better than Mistrust. From Mistrust you only had 1 condition and can be condi cleansed easily, now you have two conditions and Blind is a pretty strong condition too. Also it compliments well with Blinding Dissipation, so just shattering you can immediately get a blind and 2 stacks of confusion.

Well I just dropped a Gravity well on a group and got 4 interrupts. Usually that would be 16 stacks of AoE confusion onto the four people within range of each other. But with this new trait it was, err, 2 stacks each and a blind. It feels a lot worse.

I really loved Mistrust for its unpredictability in larger scraps and it was actually quite rewarding if you took the time to line your interrupts up correctly also it was actually interesting. Comparatively, blind on interrupt on a single target is just not rewarding at all – that needs more.

The other part of the trait is of course great with Blinding Dissipation, but oh my is it utterly boring compared to Mistrust. What a shame.

I always got the impression that Anet designed each objective in the DBL to be a succinct event for whatever reason. Unfortunately for them, players love map control and objective cohesion, hence why this is one of the many reasons people do not like the map.

I do remember the Southern towers had destructible barricades attached to them that blocked off certain paths, but they just made things more tedious for roamers whilst having no impact on zerg movements at all. Maybe that was the point, but ultimately the game didn’t need more ways to make zerging the only appealing gameplay style for WvW.

It is a major problem that has made the combat in the game far less satisfying but the flip side of this is that there’s just so much easily deliverable damage now too that it’s so much easier to kill someone when they’re not blocking/evading/invulnerable than it was before HoT/specialisation update. Sometimes I kill people in this game with minimal effort and I just shudder now. All the finesse of a well timed burst has just evaporated from this game.

Ah yes that one time out of a hundred where Mistrust actually causes chaos and feels like the GM trait it was always supposed to be. I just wish those ninety-nine other times I didn’t feel like I was putting in quite a lot of effort for very little pay-off. Especially when one considers what Necro can do in WvW now

Quite disappointed that I didn’t get to play my favourite game mode this evening. I hear the grindy stuff can take some time to get access to so I guess I’ll get back into WvW when the influx of new people have their legendary backpieces plus ascended access and leave.

Personally don’t care about rewards. Just wanted a nice bit of siege warfare before bed

Yeah it’s rather obscene what Anet are doing. They are continuing to ruin combat in WvW. I just don’t get it.

Well tactics fighting them are essentially the same, just now you take triple the bleed damage against certain rotations when they land. It still feels like a misstep for Deathly Chill to exist in its current form in WvW especially considering how much ranged AoE condi pressure they already had. But then again, WvW is an absolute disaster anyway so Anet might as well just triple the output of other things. I’d wager Main the Disillusioned will get another stack or two of torment because reasons.

You can still easily murder a group with a 1 second condi burst if you just cast it on a lord or supervisor during a fight. Kind of ruins the fun a lot of the time and I still think a minimum stack transfer should be added so fights aren’t trivialised so much.

The nerf to Illusionary Reversion wasn’t needed. They could have just removed the second phantasm from Echo of Memory and then most of the “clone spam” would be immediately addressed without the need to drag other weapon sets through the gutter. This would also solve the issue with Chronophantasma as you would no longer have a single phantasm skill producing four illusions.

It mostly feels like a nerf. Slower cast time and an attack that does very little whilst also now revealing you. The animation looks rather odd too like the Mesmer should probably be doing damage around them but you just get a poor man’s Mirror Blade instead.

It’s the same for the Phantasmal Swordsman change but at least that looks quite cool. I’m pretty certain that phantasms do not benefit from Might though – so that addition is really odd unless they’ve changed that.

I like the bit where they nerf a skill and add a new effect to change its functionality, but the nerf doesn’t get into WvW…so everything just becomes more powerful.

I guess I really needed to have poison as well as 2.5 seconds of immobilise from my automatic snare trait.

Daredevil does well against both power and condi builds now due to the buff to Signet of Agility. For my Mesmer I find it much easier to kill Daredevils on my power build because I can end the fight much quicker with a well timed burst. It’s a difficult fight simply because the evade uptime is really high between Signet of Agility + Channelled Vigor + all the other endurance gain things. Then there’s the stealth uptime on top of that with the now pretty uncounterable BP>Bound combo, although Dash is arguably harder to deal with because it means the DD is immune to any attempts to root them. Stuns don’t really work because Bandit’s Defense has a very short cooldown. The window to land a burst is very small and often reliant on the DD making a mistake that I can capitalise on. Usually forcing them to burn a few things early on by faking out a burst can help.

A PU condi Mes can bunker nicely against a DD but it’s not a certain win because the DD can disengage at any point and just wait out cooldowns. When I’m on my DD I just wait for the Mesmer to cycle through some cooldowns and then just close in. Just have to be patient. Hybrid meta Chrono probably has better killing potential against a Thief because there’s more burst. Other condi builds not running Chaos will have a tough time without any protection. So hybrid Chrono is the way to go in my opinion.

I find almost everything I use and everything I fight against to generally be overpowered in multiple ways. I struggle to pick out which class is the worst offender because everything is just a mess right now.

Anet, I love you but…..what on an earth is going on?!

Obviously Daredevil is the best by a long long way due to the combination of stealth, mobility and high spike damage with minimal setup. You can disengage at any point and the only real threat to your health is either overconfidence or another Thief. It is the optimal choice for solo roaming.

The only class that really struggles with solo roaming is Necro, although Reaper does a lot better. All other classes have viable solo roaming setups.

I consider power builds to be the best choice for solo roaming these days. Condition builds often do not have the spike damage needed to make the kill and get out quickly, plus there’s enough cleansing across most of the classes to mitigate a lot of what a condi build tries to do. It still works against….less experienced players of course of which there are many in WvW.

I don’t think I’ve had any increased problems since superspeed became a choice of traits for illusions. Most Mesmers, will likely try to produce illusions and then shatter them right on top of you anyway, so the speed they move is pretty irrelevant.

If you are in a scenario where super speed illusions are running at you from a distance you can simply dodge forward through them like you would any ranged attack.

Cynz.9437:

Wat? Last time i checked druids were must have in raids and good support/point holders in pvp.

Ah I’m just referring to WvW. However, actually Druid is a pretty good support class for small scale WvW and is a pretty good choice for 1v1s.

Whilst Thieves do tend to suffer as more people enter a fight (like Mesmer), it’s undoubtedly the king of roaming and dominates the scouting/response time role in WvW. Can’t be proficient in every role unfortunately, but it’s better to be good at one thing at least (unlike Ranger that is err, not really a role filler).

But, Thief can perform well in massive fights by just being careful. When I enter large fights I mostly pick off backliners and stragglers with my dps set, then switch to shortbow and spam Choking Gas on a stacked group to disrupt their healing rotation. Sometimes just being a nuisance and disrupting a back line can be enough to be effective.

- New map is beautiful and has some impressive attention to detail. Love how the submarines turn up to unload troops at the staging area. Adore the water effects. Some great lore infused into the map too. If the next expansion maps look as good as this it’s going to be fantastic.

- The new mastery is what I’ve always wanted from this system – actually changing how we interact with the new environment. I really hope that the next expansion is full of this sort of thing. Bravo to whoever thought of this – give them a raise because they know what we want!

- I have to say I’m not really enjoying the story anymore. There’s just too many threads all over the place and it’s hard to get invested in any of it when the resolution to plot lines are so far off or potentially never going to happen. The reveal in this episode in particular was so random with no satisfying build-up for why this is occurring. There was no “ahah!” moment, just sort of “okay I guess it’s that thing from the Guild Wars universe”.

*Err that was 190 words. Sorry

Well that video will give me nightmares. Steroid Warrior Vs Hyperactive Thief. Not something to watch before bed.

Junkpile.7439:

Do you even know how epidemic works?[/quote]

Yes. I press the button that I have mapped for that skill and it applies its effect.

It’s only really Necros that are problematic from a condition standpoint right now. This will be solved by the PvP version of Deathly Chill being introduced to WvW and another change to Epidemic. The last change to Epidemic in WvW only solved a small part of the problem and this skill still has a negative effect on the longevity of fights in WvW. Being able to block Epidemic will go a long way to adding some counterplay.

I’ll be surprised if the PvP version doesn’t come to WvW at some point. But WvW is quite a…low priority game mode so I don’t think it will be for some time.

Lord Hammer Hand.4815:

it does rediculous damage but also it has big/ hugeeeeee tell. pretty much yelling dodge me.

Which would be great if the skill had a cooldown, but we can pretty much just use it again and again if someone does avoid it.

I’ve not seen Vault damage get over 8K in sPvP, but WvW is like 10-13K on squishes most of the time.

It’s almost as if high direct damage traps were never a particularly good idea. If only this had been brought up during the beta feedback sessions…

The changes that have been made have certainly made things better. Turning into a bird and being catapulted between shrines is fun and the inclusion of Borderlands bloodlust has given a purpose to the oasis area again. Although it does seem that the central map event has gone the way of the ABL orb event and won’t return at all – but it’s probably for the best.

Despite the improvements I still avoid the DBL because the time between engagements with enemy players is too long due in part to the vast geographical isolation of the map. Also, none of the objectives have any synergy because of this geographical isolation which makes conquering the map rather unsatisfying.

Dagger auto-attack and shadow shot do too much damage. The PvP nerf to signet of agility should be applied to WvW and the signet should have a short cast time for counterplay. Pulmonary impact shouldn’t stack – really shouldn’t be rewarding up for headshot spam.

But CnD should cleave and have a shorter cast. Pistol AA should richochet with every other shot. There’s just so many things that need slight boosts to make them relevant that I can’t be bothered to list.

It’s sort of like mantra but not at the same time. And yes, you’re better off simply spamming headshot.

Condi Mesmer/chrono with Inspiration is great. Condi Mesmer/chrono without inspiration is a free kill. It’s pretty dull being so binary.

Power Mesmer/chrono is basically either wombo combo before anyone can do anything or utterly irrelevant and a free kill. With so many auto traits and HoT skills with built in sustain the wombo combo is only effective against new players that aren’t pressing their skills fast enough to avoid a wombo combo serendipitously.

Jim Hunter.6821:

When power builds are easily landing 5-10k+ hits on players with 3k armor, the passive survival dire gear is providing is 1 extra burst or maybe a few auto attacks.

Traits/active defense/boons>toughness

Can confirm that my rabid Mesmer with over 3K armour still eats 8K CoRs, 6-9K backstabs, 5-6K meteors, 5-6k Thief dagger auto-attack chains, 7K Rapid Fires. A stack of DH traps has instantly downed me (so straight into downed state) on both my full zerk and full rabid Mesmer.

The reason I take so much damage is because my build does not have access to solo protection. Protection is everything these days. Toughness just feels redundant comparatively.

I don’t think it would have a particularly positive impact on the game mode. Now that damage in WvW is unmanageably high, downed state is one of the only things providing us all with some sort of fallback for those ridiculous moments where a stray bit of AoE touched your foot and removed the second half of your health bar. It would also make killing players just ridiculously easy in WvW and the intricacies of securing stomps/directing spikes on downed players would be entirely removed.

Between Escapist’s Absolution, Shadow Step and Signet of Agility (needs the endurance nerf in WvW) it’s very hard to get conditions to stick to Daredevils now. You need to make sure they have used both Shadow Step and SoA before committing to a multi-cooldown condi burst and then you have to, well, weapon stow a bit and focus on personal survivability.

Pistol Whip can usually be countered by just keeping active during the fight because the stun is too short to keep you rooted for the duration of the sword attack unless coupled with an immobilise before hand. Reaper’s Protection will interrupt the Thieves opening Pistol Whip which is handy for mitigating the first Steal>PW in particular.

But really, when I play Pistol Whip Thief and come up against a Reaper there’s very little they can really do as I can just shortbow around to wait out Reaper Shroud and can interrupt everything between headshot, pistol whip, basilisk and traited steal. Conditions aren’t that much of a threat either.

One great tip in WvW is just abuse terrain and deny Thief its teleports. Just stand on a small wall or rock and they can never actually steal or infiltrator’s strike to you but rather wonderfully they will often port just below you for a nice bomb

But the current meta basically is a hammer train meta. It just now incorporates epidemic spikes at select times and celestial Guardians to capitalise on burn stacking – although most guardians are running other things still. But essentially it’s a melee train drunk on boons. Apart from Epi spikes, there’s so many ways to clear conditions now for almost every class.

The main issue with the current meta is how incredibly easy it is to create a group that is impervious to anything but an epi spike because the rate of boon application is just ridiculously high and absolutely outpaces boon strip/corrupt. With the exception of Necro, they really need to buff some boon stripping skills in WvW for some classes. Well, ideally boon application would be nerfed to sensible levels, but that is never going to happen so power creep away Anet!

Hevoskuuri.3891:

Simonoly.4352:

Honestly that MetaBattle build isn’t very good unless you come up against builds that have absolutely no cleanse. Almost all of your condition pressure comes from shatters…..that will do minuscule direct damage because you are full dire. I see Chronos sometimes running this build and it’s just so easy to ignore them. If you go hybrid stats with this build you will have much more success in actually putting pressure on people. Dragonhunters and Thieves will still shut you down with ease though.

However, if you want to remain dire and actually have some noticeable pressure (outside of 1v1s) take sceptre instead of sword and then perhaps take torch over shield for reliable burn application. However, shield is a solid choice no matter what you’re playing and Tides of Time is just immense with Mistrust. If you’re taking duelling instead of Inspiration, just slot cleaning sigils and take Null Field or Mantra of Resolve.

What kind of hybrid would you recommend then? Carrion/Sinister over Dire? Or mixing in some zerker with dire? I like shield too much to replace it, but will try out scepter in stead of sword. Thanks for the tip.

Yep Sinister is a good choice or even Viper’s if you have the time to spare to accumulate it. Mix in a bit of Trailblazer’s, Rabid, or Dire to get to a toughness/vitality level that you are comfortable with.

However, if you’re going to take on sceptre then full dire works a treat. If you want more condi pressure from Duelling, Rabid is a good choice also. I currently use full rabid but use those ascended rabid/dire mixture trinkets to give myself a bit more vitality.

Honestly that MetaBattle build isn’t very good unless you come up against builds that have absolutely no cleanse. Almost all of your condition pressure comes from shatters…..that will do minuscule direct damage because you are full dire. I see Chronos sometimes running this build and it’s just so easy to ignore them. If you go hybrid stats with this build you will have much more success in actually putting pressure on people. Dragonhunters and Thieves will still shut you down with ease though.

However, if you want to remain dire and actually have some noticeable pressure (outside of 1v1s) take sceptre instead of sword and then perhaps take torch over shield for reliable burn application. However, shield is a solid choice no matter what you’re playing and Tides of Time is just immense with Mistrust. If you’re taking duelling instead of Inspiration, just slot cleaning sigils and take Null Field or Mantra of Resolve.

OriOri.8724:

C – This still doesn’t change my point that traps aren’t at all trap-like

I’ve always been disappointed with this. Most of the traps are just AoE that you drop at your feet and in the case of Thief and Dragonhunter you teleport to people and just vomit the damage. The lack of arming time or preparation to traps makes them, well, not traps.

I was surprised to see Anet actually add an arming time to Thief traps at least. I’d happily have to to deal with arming times on my Ranger and DH if Anet choose to actually pursue this further.

This trait doesn’t work if you are underwater. On successful interrupt, no confusion is applied to your target or anything around the target.

The trait does work if you interrupt a target in water when you are on land, so it appears that Mistrust just doesn’t function if you are in underwater combat ‘mode’.

I honestly find nearly everything I use to be OP these days. CS and Chronophantasma on my Chrono feels broken for obvious reasons. Evade uptime and D/P utility+damage on my Daredevil is just ridiculous. PB>RP with ancestor’s seed on my longbow Druid is just obscene especially coupled with access to an equivalent water attunement and a mini mass invis whenever I need.

Other stuff I don’t play regularly but kind of ruins everything includes: the design of Coalescence of Ruin and that ridiculous taunt trait on Revenant, berserk taunt+Arc Divider with it’s ridiculous range on Berserker, auto condi transfer and auto spinal shivers on Necro, the poor design of Spear of Justice and Hunter’s Determination on Dragonhunter, the frustrating sustain available to Scrapper and finally Meteor Shower damage on Ele is just nuts these days and completely invalidates wall defence.

Those are things I can think of that immediately make me sigh.