Guild Wars 2

Velran.1052:

lol more people using their salt over daredevils to justify bad game mechanics. Movement speed is part of DD balance (or unbalance), and regardless of if it needs to be nerfed or not, you should not be inherently allowed to escape fights that easily.
Kittening hilarious when zerglings call roamers bad and demand not fighting anything that they cant win over. Guess this community will continue to be a cucked downhill spiral into casualness. Might as well replace other servers with AI that cant fight back so even with the crappiest zerg build you wouldn’t stand a chance of losing.

If you run a zerg build that can’t fight 1v1 then don’t go around alone. Otherwise you deserve to die. And this isn’t about people running away. This is about people waypointing the moment i render on their screen. I’ve had people WP away while outnumbering us, leaving their friends to die.

Honey, it’s absolutely about people running away.

You even included gliding in the OP, don’t even pretend.

You’re annoyed because you can’t use your completely lame, brainless to play roaming build to kill off someone not built to fight you, don’t even pretend otherwise.

Here’s an idea, maybe adapt to the reality that a roamer’s job is supposed to be cutting off reinforcements and flipping camps.

Not 1v1’ing every person you can see.

You want to talk about what’s killing WvW? It’s people like you.

No one needs a useless selfish roamer that just goes and gets pointless kills. You’re doing nothing for your server, you’re actually more pointless than a full glass pug that can’t push in a fight.

It’s so funny reading these things from my perspective.

I’ve played Mesmer for years, and complained about pretty much the opposite of the OP. I complained about how everything unique to our class gets nerfed to the ground. How all of our support either slowly gets removed (Dungeon bosses being changed to no longer be affected by reflects for instance), or literally gets deleted (They didn’t even give Well of Precog pulsing stability. It has literally 0 use as it is).

Contrasting it now that I’ve shifted over to Necro, I have almost no complaints with Necro as a class.

“We lack stability” => I almost never ran with stab on Mesmer anyway, as I usually ran glass Mesmer outside of WvW, and in WvW half the time I’d run glass anyway because it was fun.

“We lack blocks” => We can hit people through their blocks with our marks. We’re one of the 2, maybe 3? classes that can stop a guardian from healing by interrupting them through their blocks.

“Lack of evasion” => 2 dodges, spectral walk, the ability to get a very durable 2nd health bar when running spectral armor. I mean, yeah. Necro kind of suffers from a lack of mobility, but I see it as a fair compromise for the fact that I’m able to down most people if they’re dumb enough to straight up brawl me. The exception is warriors & S/D thieves…

“healing skills that work” => I actually have no complaints about consume conditions… I usually end up throwing a fear mark at my feet & healing up.

“vigor” => Run a sigil of energy? Again, coming from playing glass Mesmer I really didn’t have access to much if any vigor.

Honestly, in open world, sPvP, and WvW I’m having a lot of fun on Necro, and I feel like the Necro forums might be a bit too negative on the class.

Maybe go out there and play some of the other classes for a while to get perspective.

To be fair on the “overstacked server” crap everyone is saying.

I’m not on an overstacked server, but when you link 3 servers with high coverage at 3 different points in time, you end up with a stacked server that has nearly 24/7 coverage.

It’s not like going to Eredon Terrace, for example, is going to get you short queue times as you’ll be linked to a much larger server anyway.

Unless you’re going to server hop every other link to stay off stacked servers, good luck not being on a stacked server at some point in time.

Now, on the topic of the OP and afkers, there is already a 10 minute AFK timer. Your changes would do nothing to improve that in order to get afkers off map. Especially since you’re giving them an extra 5 minutes to come back with the math question.

Velran.1052:

It’s honestly amazing that people are using the fact that i play daredevil to justify broken game mechanics. I cant imagine roaming on a class with less mobility considering how many people i have WP before even DD mobility can catch them. If you go outside with a kittenty build its your own god kitten fault.

This is the exact same reason that logging out while in combat counts you as dying. You should not be allowed to avoid playing the game just because you’re likely to loose in that situation.

Here’s the issue with the idiotic assessment that you shouldn’t be able to waypoint if an enemy is near you.

1. There are loads of hostile NPCs on the borderlands.
2. This means a daredevil thief. ONE daredevil thief. Could stealth up and troll an entire squad, preventing them from waypointing back to their keep in order to glide down & defend hills or bay, or either of the northern tower on the BLs. Or any of the towers near your keep on EBG. Making those 2 objectives wayyy harder to defend.

Not that you couldn’t already do this by tapping garri/their keep, but it’s far more often I’ve seen thieves and the like stalking a zerg than I have people actually tapping objectives with way points.

Mostly because roamers are actually crybabies playing brainless cancer builds, and the thought of them doing something useful literally burns their souls.

Yeah, lemme run condi S/D thief and literally be untouchable for anyone I’m attacking. Ain’t that fun. But never, and I mean never, will I hit the gate of this objective over here to prevent my enemies from way pointing to it.

QuantumCat.9051:

Strider Pj.2193:

Velran.1052:

I actually play daredevil and the few times people manage to WP away from me is because they WP almost as soon as they see me from ranged. How is that fun, Or decent gameplay? Literally avoiding playing the game.

And adapt? Play a whole new class because of a new crap mechanic? And how many ranged stuns are there even? And from what people are telling me knockback doesn’t even break the glide.

Oh and defenders don’t need anymore advantages.

Likely they are on a Zerg spec, and know they can’t beat a daredevil. It’s a complement. Yeah, it’s frustrating, but they know you’d wax them.

+1. I avoid single combat when I play a Zerg spec, and always engage when I’m on my roaming daredevil. That said, I don’t attack players who are clearly running back to their Zerg, unless I’m helping a commander take down a Tower or Keep.

Killing someone not spec’d for single combat with my cheese thief build gives me no satisfaction.

It gives most of the roamers I run in satisfaction. Running in a 6 man group & picking off a single dude running back to his pugzerg without changing any of his bar.

Then dropping an omega golem on his corpse.

God I love running those losers over with a 20+ man group and dropping omega golems all over their corpses.

Or downing 2 of them before I go down. Great job guys, I still technically win in my own mind.

Galmac.4680:

Necros could have more condi removals, staff-4, dagger-4, one with healing, one shout, a well, that pest signet and even a trait to send conditions away. But I guess noone uses that alltogether.

Most necros I see are bad, and waste staff 4 for a bit of damage, or forget it condi cleanses period.

Just like I bet 90% of necros forget axe 3 actually corrupts 2 boons in an AoE, and that you could run a sigil of absorption and steal another boon away with the warhorn.

I actually don’t even understand people that use scepter or greatsword in WvW. Axe & Staff are just such amazing weapons for WvW.

Caedmon.6798:

This is why the community on this forum absolutely suck donkey balls.people playing described classes are unable to come forward as to how broken it all really is and keep on defending it with utter kittening nonsense hoping their stuff wont get touched.Anet reading these threads thinking its all fine seeing 90% of the people defend this playstyle,but thats only because 90% of the people play this disgusting kitten.Hell when i played condi warr i could openly admit to how broken it was,but you kitteners keep on pretending and defending what shouldnt be defended.

To be completely honest with you, the entire balance of the game is broken, and it’s not due to conditions.

Are condi necros extremely powerful? Yes.

Would the game be better with condi necro nerfed? No.

You would just lose one more class in the WvW composition, that’s it.

It would just solidify the melee train that much more. Because one of the only classes in the game, right now, that’s actually able to punish a melee train, is the Necro in its current iteration.

People are tankier than they’ve ever been. People have more stability & resistance than they’ve ever had.

Something has to remove all of that or kill people despite it.

Necros are just the chosen peoples for the job.

They’re not the reason the job exists in the first place.

Taobella.6597:

Well that does not fix the problem that there is the condies from necro and where its going and how it relates to wvw. Any thing outside of that being said is more then like a detraction and misinformation.

please tell me how what i said is misleading con nerco only run 1 con removal if you intrup it cancel con removal means instant GG?.

Condi necro has 3 condition removals depending on what they’re running.

Staff mark 4, consume conditions, and they could be running Plague Sending, which is a personal favorite of mine since I actually find it more potent than chilling darkness.

Sometimes I’ll jump in a condi bomb & crit someone just to laugh maniacally as they die.

Now, you could call me a scrub for running that trait over Chilling Darkness and “sacrificing a bit of DPS”.

But considering I run a DPS meter and 9/10 I’m top DPS (Glass tempests and heralds can beat me out, but it depends on how well we each place our damage, and how long the fight lasts) of whatever group I’m in, I’d take such an insult with a hand wave.

Shining One.1635:

Grim West.3194:

The Devs specifically allowed BlackGate to overstack. They couldn’t be dumb enough to open BlackGate over and over and over and over again when BG was hibernating. Nobody is that stupid.

Why do so many people assume this is a manual process that involves a developer “opening” up a server to allow a transfer? I’m fairly sure it’s an automated process.

To be fair, more things in this game are manual processes than you’d think.

If I’m not mistaken the WvW matchups & links, as an example, are manual processes.

Them doing the server opening/closing manually isn’t a huge stretch when you think about it XD.

I actually really enjoy gliding, and the advantage it gives to the defenders.

ProverbsofHell.2307:

I agree, and it looks a hundred times better than any other WvW map – but why does nobody want to go there?

It is an absolute slog to get around the map to defend camps & keeps.
“But you can travel faster than alpines”, only with all of the shrines controlled.

It’s just much much larger than the old borderlands.

And just like the old borderlands, it has a very big issue that people won’t admit. The complete lack of a centralized objective.

If everyone else’s server is remotely like mine, EBG always has loads of people, and the BLs are a coin flip on whether or not they have people.

This is because EBG brings the fights. Hitting middle fort (SMC) is a lot of fun, and offers fights pretty much on demand.

Comparatively, hitting Garri in the BLs is like hitting the keep in EBG. A complete and total pain to do, due to the distant travel, easy defense positioning, etc etc.

There’s nothing like SMC on the other BLs. And I honestly think the BLs are worse for it. Especially desert BL, which could really use a central objective as a rallying point.

BeepBoopBop.5403:

STIHL.2489:

I actually like some of the ideas I have seen about getting rid of servers and making WvW a more Guild/alliance style game. I think that would fix a large part of the problem we are having with server issues and population balance.

Continuing this thread in that direction will just get the thread closed. Has been suggested many times, its not happening. Still need a realistic solution to the hibernators though.

The realistic solution to the hibernators is to give up.

There, I said it.

Do. Nothing.

Here’s the thing, this has built up the point where nuclear options are the only real options.
And ANet doesn’t want to do those.

So there is no realistic solution to it.

STIHL.2489:

TheOneWhoSighs.7513:

STIHL.2489:

LOL.. class balance in GW2 is a Pathetic Joke. That is why it never even got close to becoming an e-sport.

There’s actually a list of reasons, rather than blaming it on only one reason.

LoL was a horribly balanced game for quite a long time, yet became an e-sport.

Never played LoL, it looked dorky, but, let me ask you a question, could you build one Jinx to be massively more powerful then any other Jinx, or were they all around the same?

There was fine tuning you could do with rune pages & masteries, yes. Heck, you can still do that.

One of the things for ranked, is knowing what everyone runs on X character the other person chose, and grabbing enough armor penetration runes that would could do true damage in lane until they leveled up a bit.

Was something I would do on Ahri in order to get a level 3 gank top/bottom going, or to just kill the enemy mid at level 3.

Often I would choose the latter.

Now, mirror match-ups don’t happen in LoL’s ranked, so I can’t say “I can make my Ahri OP in comparison to another person’s Ahri”.

STIHL.2489:

LOL.. class balance in GW2 is a Pathetic Joke. That is why it never even got close to becoming an e-sport.

There’s actually a list of reasons, rather than blaming it on only one reason.

LoL was a horribly balanced game for quite a long time, yet became an e-sport.

The reality is, ANet didn’t have the funding needed to keep the game itself from imploding, let alone pump enough money into an e-sports scene to get it going.

NCSoft seemed pretty hesitant to toss funds at ANet back before they were doing expansions.

Couple that with a pretty boring to watch PvP mode, every streamer being an elitist (Or pretending to be an elitist) , and you couldn’t even get the casual scene sparked, let alone the e-sports scene.

Sovereign.8152:

I think he could be onto something with the “blink dodge” suggestion.

Think about it, it would blink you only as far as a roll would have taken you so it’s not a mobility buff. You would also only receive the same iframes as you would with a roll or mirage cloak… so no net gain. Animation change and mobility fix only.

But here’s the awesome bit:
What if it looked exactly like the clone creation animation?

Imagine it, if you have deceptive evasion, you would leave a clone behind, in your place, and it would appear to your enemy that the clone created you as a clone, making it that much harder to identify which one is the real Mesmer.

It’s genius and plays right into the deceptive Mirage theme.

Counter argument:

The entire game would light ablaze as people complained that Mesmer has “Unlimited blinks”.

2 blinks on dodge, a long range blink utility, 3 blinks on elite, 2 utilities that blink toward an enemy, 2 more blinks on dodges, sword 3 blink, staff 2 blink

ALL THE BLINKS! UNLIMITED BLINKS!!!!!!!!

Add in sword ambushes and dear god, truly everyone would complain about the Nike Mesmer.

VAHNeunzehnsechundsiebzig.3618:

McKenna Berdrow.2759:

We will be adding a new currency that is similar to Proof of Heroics that will allow you to buy new sigils, runes, recipes, and hero points from PoF.

so all the hero points I have done despite having maxed everything will be worthless? I really do not want to grind through all of PoF just to max out the elite. THAT is a horrible, thankless, boring grind.

No, the hero points already earned will be useful. The proof of heroics will not be.

Just like world completion hero points could be spent on HoT specs, HoT hero points will be spendable on PoF specs.

So you did not waste your time.

And, in fact, you could even use proofs of heroics to buy all of the hero points available to them, and probably get pretty close to maxing a new elite spec. So even proof of heroics are still useful for this, assuming you’re as lazy as I am.

Who knows.

As far as I know, the WvW match-ups are determined by hand.

So the answer is: Probably nothing.

My biggest issue with mesmer’s blink, has always been how badly it screws you over in WvW.

You cannot, for some reason, cleanly blink around/past broken walls in keeps/smc/towers/etc. Whatever calculation they’re running, the game just doesn’t allow it.

That has literally gotten me killed on more than one occasion, and it’s very frustrating.

I recommend every single person complaining about CC in this thread to ask yourself how often you get frustrated compared to how often you actively look for a solution. Be honest with yourself.

The vast majority of the time I look for a solution.

However, when I come to the forums to discuss WvW, I’m not here to show off my 20 ft long waffle that I some how found a toaster large enough to toast.

I’m here to discuss balance, and things that I perceive as issues.

And that’s where you’ve lost me entirely.

You used to be able to reasonably play a selfish class in WvW, and in GvGs having 2 people playing gank used to be pretty standard.

Now the entire gamemode is a melee train, and you’re screaming “get good” because I’d like to scale back down into the days where playing gank was viable. And where gank wasn’t just a dodge spamming B.S. fest.

Anyone can adapt, but I suppose it takes a bit of a different thought process to look at the big picture and go “This seems wrong”.

Strider Pj.2193:

XenesisII.1540:

Strider Pj.2193:

Hibernation: keeping an account inactive for multiple weeks from WvW.

Has been a tactic used by servers to allow guilds to access ’full’’ servers.

Also an issue when new content comes out it impacts population balance significantly.

I would suggest we remove server affiliation from any account that has not been active as defined by accumulating any participation in WvW for greater than 6 weeks.

These accounts would be required to choose a new server from among the open server lists when attempting to access WvW again.

It would place increased challenges on active hibernation (organized effort to open a ‘full’ server) and it would significantly reduce the potential disparity with accounts that only play WvW around new content.

If They aren’t contributing to their server or community for 6 weeks or more, then they should not be affiliated with that community.

You want them to do this with the current server structure? the one that has 10+ servers locked regularly? Don’t even think they have the means to lock an account out of wvw for the server it’s currently residing on, and then have to build an automated system to do the transfers.

Not to mention how incredibly unfair for someone who picked their server on account creation, and were on it the entire time, take how ever long off and now they get booted to some other server because people decided to bandwagon to theirs.

Lastly I can see people taking 6 weeks off just to get a free bandwagon transfer.

So… that bandwagon transfer would happen to a lower tier server? One not full? I wouldn’t have a problem with them being able to do it. As opposed to people happy with and active in their current situation being forced to choose something else.

So… someone hasn’t played in a year.. they still feel that server identity? Really?

How many instances of real life stuff for the most active servers, would need longer than 6 weeks?

People here have advocated for the closure of BG, blowing up ALL servers and forcing transfers, free transfers, no locked servers..

This gives people a choice. Play, or be moved.

If you can’t be active for even a tick of participation (not tier 6, or any large amount, just a tick) in a 6 weeks span….

On one hand, I can agree that the server pride probably isn’t there if you haven’t been able to play for 6 weeks.

One the other hand, guild pride probably is still there.

Plenty of guilds have discords, and I’ve seen plenty of guildies take elongated breaks from the game to work on themselves IRL.

I can see how this could be very distressing to someone who wants to be with their guild when they come back, tbh.

I think, if you want to go this route, it’s best to split off from the normal servers entirely, and start from scratch with servers specific to WvW, that have fixed sizes, and that everyone understands “isn’t permanent”. Basically, blowing up the servers on a scheduled basis.

That would get rid of some of the server based identity, and move more towards Guild identity, given that it’s freaking Guild wars.

Why don’t we just take BG, with their insane amount of people and coverage.

And make that its own WvW server & its own thing.

Make some sort of alliance war thing where the guilds there can choose an alliance, and they’re all fighting each other to decide which alliance is the best in all of BG.

There, bandwagon solved.

Meetshield.1756:

He lost me at “All these can be replaced except Firebrand” Clearly he is a guardian main nubcake.

Firebrand is awkward. I’m sure someone will find a use for it, but right now its just a shiny flashy thing.

If Anet cared about WvW… but anyway… Enjoy the morning boys, Its FRIDAY.

The only reason why Firebrand is awkward, is because the tomes need tweaking.

Of all the elite specs coming in, the issues with firebrand are the easiest to fix.

Get rid of the cast time to pull a tome out, and change up the page mechanic to an ammo one so that you can more freely swap tomes.

Boom, Firebrand is probably over powered at that point because the tomes themselves are pretty great, so they’d need a bit of dialing back.

Maybe make it like elementalist, where each tome goes on a say, a 5 second cooldown when you swap off, on top of the page limitation.

Strider Pj.2193:

How is the enemy server able to claim your structures anyway?

Don’t tell me about the mechanics, as I know : troll account and repping the guild. I get the base mechanics.

But how do they rate enough damage on your server to be in the claim priority list over your guilds?

If they are that high up in the claim priority List, you are kittened anyway because if they are that populated on your server, or you are that scarce on your server, then tactics are the least of your worries.

The actual answer is embarrassing for the guilds.
The guild previously claiming it claims something else, without realizing it. Leaving it open for any guild to claim.

And boom, trolls nabbed it.

Admittedly, that one is less of a problem and more of a flat out embarrassment for the guild that let it go.

But the alliance white list is still a somewhat reasonable idea.

I say somewhat, because maintaining such a list is unquestionably time consuming.

I just feel like the devs need to do something about this already, even if it’s some off the wall idea that’s difficult to maintain.

Been almost 2 years now.

Still have no reporting option for “pulled tact in WvW to be a troll”.

Still have no log of who pulled X tactic.

Don’t say “don’t set it to be public”, because that’s not an option if you want to be able to cover your kitten on a server that has limited coverage at different times of the day.

Also, it would be nice if guilds could ban certain people from using tactics on places they claim.

Or you know what would be a good idea?

How about build an alliance white list that can pull “non-public” tactics on a server. That way if an enemy guild happens to claim something on your server & set it to private, people on the alliance white list can still pull tactics they set. (Yes, that has happened before)

At this point I’m just kicking around ideas that anyone who spent more than an hour in WvW could have come up with. Can we get something done about this already?

I play a lot of different characters, and tend to play with people that understand basic synergistic qualities. If you want to strawman that I main warrior, I will refute that this thread is about CC in general. Necro gets to stack 40 bleeds and nuke enormous aoe(they usually aren’t right up front eh), Warrior gets to eat a lot of CC (it’s your frontline)….

It is about CC in general, and as I said before, it’s a giant freaking circle.

The amount of CC in the game is directly proportional to the amount of boon rips & mitigation in the freaking game.

You wouldn’t be refuting anything by saying Warrior’s meant to absorb lots of CC and damage, you’d merely be explaining why there’s so much freaking CC in the first place.

Not that warrior is even taken in WvW anymore, outside of BS roaming builds, because that’s how much boon rip & CC is in the game. Warrior as a class has frankly been out scaled.

Nobody can afford to take a more selfish front liner, so everyone takes more Guardians & Revenants. Along with more Reapers in order to strip the front lines of the stab & resistance they’re pumping out.

Like I explained before, it’s a giant circle of never ending power creep until the game is rebalanced.

Yes, you’re right. Today a group can minimize the effects of crap loads of CC with crap loads of stab.

And today a grroup can minimize the effects of crap loads of stab with crap loads of boon rips.

And tomorrow boon rips will be even more plentiful.

And in the next few months stability & condi cleanse will be even more plentiful.

And in the next few months condies & boon rips will be even more plentiful.

And in the next few months…

Seeing it yet?

Because I’m a bit sick of the elitist mentality of “Everything is fine because you can just do X” when power creep comes into question.

I’ll say it again, there’s so much CC in the game, that a small group can spam it to break a boss’s bar.

The fact that that isn’t throwing off signals in everyone’s head that “Maybe that’s not a good thing”, is beyond me.

The existence of a CC break bar on bosses, should be a sign that there’s too much CC in the game.

CrashTheGrey.1492:

Svarty.8019:

I was saying this in March (it’s 2017, for the record): https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Stunlock-Needs-to-Go/first

I’ve been stunlocked by one or two players and then spiked down in moments. I’ve built to be super tanky as a consequence and usually survive, albeit barely.

The stuns in Guild Wars 2 are a problem at the moment. I don’t know whether it’s a combination of multiple enemies hitting one player it or whether it’s a single super-long stun or a spammable stun on a the class that doesn’t have cooldowns (Thief).

Multiple Enemies lining up CC on a single enemy…. as if a single player should reliably be able to shrug off multiple people at once CCing them with good timing. (Fun Fact, you can do this, if you aren’t garbage and/or you have a nice bro willing to stab you in a decent team composition.)

If a group of 4 people is smart enough to strip your stability source early and lock you down, it’s a valid tactic where a person was Outplayed/outgunned.

Comfortable in saying that when I can run into a group of 30 kittenin people and make it out on multiple classes by utilizing good skill usage, and/or good teammates, CC is not a surplus comparatively to it’s counters.

Yes, you can all “git gud”. Run builds that round out your weaknesses, or find people that let you specialize. It’s like people are allergic to thinking but certainly not complaining.

Nike warriors telling people to “git gud”.

Can I have 8 full seconds of invuln that comes in 2 pieces, that both literally come with stun break, one of them is automatic.

Bucket loads of mobility, pulsing resistance, and a 25 second cooldown block (20s when traited), condi cleanse on weapon swap (+ faster weapon swap), immobilize clear every single time I use a movement ability (Of which I literally carry around 4).

Yeah, hun.

It’s a hell of a lot easier for a nike warrior to get away 1v30 than it is for say, a Necro, that struggles to even fit swiftness on its bar let alone more than 1 stun break/condi cleanse.

It’s like the warrior class was built specifically to be extremely durable in a very selfish way, or something.

Deniara Devious.3948:

Dawdler.8521:

Engineers, forever ignored.

Engineers are probably the least played profession in WvWvW. They have never been the meta. I don’t think holosmith will replace hammer scrapper, because it lacks defense.

Arenanet could sometimes perhaps read the engineer sub forum and do some of the sensible suggestions from there.

Engineer rifle needs serious love. Currently it is extremely high risk ranged choice, which requires to be at close range for maximum burst. Rifle #4, overcharged shot, with the all the projectile hate e.g. reflects, is very easy way to kill yourself. I think rifle #3, blunderbuss, should be a blast finisher and rifle #5, leap shot, really needs a bit faster animation + evade frames. Then it could be used as additional source of mobility (currently it can even lead to immobilized at air = death). These would also benefit holosmith elite spec as rifle could suit it.

Orbital Command grandmaster trait should increase mortar’s auto attack radius from 120 to 180 in addition to its current effect. This would increase the likelihood of comboing, without still making it too overpowered compared to staff ele. Mortar is pretty low DPS kit, but it has a lot of fields and 100 % projectile finisher auto, which suffers from too small radius.

Medkit needs serious love. Medkit #1 currently only heals others in way too small cone. It should heal the engineer as well and/or do some damage effects e.g. compare with water staff ele #1 or druid staff #1. Medkit #2-5 should be turned into 1/2 s cast 360 degree burst centered on the engineer 360 radius, affects up to 5 allies including the engineer. This would give engineer the sorely needed group utility instead.

Overall with 3 changes alone, engineer could find itself in meta. Without any changes to the core engineer, I don’t think holosmith / core engineer will be part of the zerg meta.

The reason why Engineer isn’t in the meta, is that it finds itself sharing a slot with a guardian or elementalist.

Honestly, your suggested changes wouldn’t fix that.

If anything, they should be buffing elixer tosses. Say what you want, but elixers are the path to getting Engineers into WvW.

Give toss elixer B a larger radius (Actually, give all of the elixer tosses, minus X, a larger radius). Give it a 600 radius and it will easily compete with stand your ground despite having a slightly lower duration (5 1/2 seconds when traited) and fewer stacks.

Get rid of the randomness of Elixer X, give it some actual use like Plague Lands, but make it Engineer unique. Toss Elixer X actually has great potential in WvW, but it’s held back by how utterly awful the utility is otherwise.

Even if Elixer X became a field that just bubbled up stacks of poison on people walking over it, it would be an improvement over the mess that’s currently there.

Oh, and get rid of the randomness on toss elixer H.

God, ANet really used to love “random effects”.

Artaz.3819:

TheOneWhoSighs.7513:

Mirage is extremely strong from a selfish defensive capability and condi damage and in combat mobility aspect. Core Mesmer Veil and Portal utilities will continue to be the role that they play though. Every zerg will want to have a few to fulfill this role but can live without it. More coordinated zergs will continue to win because of initiative and there is a solid role for Mirage to play rez focused while in the heat of it because of mirage evade mechanic not interrupting actions.

You’ve completely lost me. Mirage doesn’t offer anything over Chrono for a zerg.

Literally nothing. not a single one of mirage’s utilities or traits are helpful for a zerg. The only thing Mirage has over chrono is the ability to continue casting while dodging, and sword 1 ambush leaps.

That’s it.

Mirage is the Mesmer equivalent of a non-venomshare Thief. It holds zero value in a zerg over the other possible variants of Mesmer.

Want more invuln? Take signets. Want utility? Mirage has none. Want clone generation? Chrono. Want to use veil 4 times as a single person? Chrono. Want a useful shield that’ll help you survive when the fight starts? Chrono.

Want to play the most selfish Mesmer build to exist yet? Even more selfish than base power shatter Mesmer? Play Mirage.

We are saying the same thing. Mirage is self defensive focused (basically the 2nd traits across the elite line) and the rest of it is weak. But portal and veil will still have a role as they did before for zerg.

Nobody takes Mesmers for portals or veils.

The only things we offer are some extra stab/condi cleanse, boon strip with null field, and gravity well/time warp.

Veils are too predictable, just take smoke fields.

Portals are literally suicide. There’s a reason why I always tell people to pull emergency way points before inner is down. It’s because once you know where the enemy is suddenly going to flood from, you just bomb the crap out of that one spot.

Mirage is extremely strong from a selfish defensive capability and condi damage and in combat mobility aspect. Core Mesmer Veil and Portal utilities will continue to be the role that they play though. Every zerg will want to have a few to fulfill this role but can live without it. More coordinated zergs will continue to win because of initiative and there is a solid role for Mirage to play rez focused while in the heat of it because of mirage evade mechanic not interrupting actions.

You’ve completely lost me. Mirage doesn’t offer anything over Chrono for a zerg.

Literally nothing. not a single one of mirage’s utilities or traits are helpful for a zerg. The only thing Mirage has over chrono is the ability to continue casting while dodging, and sword 1 ambush leaps.

That’s it.

Mirage is the Mesmer equivalent of a non-venomshare Thief. It holds zero value in a zerg over the other possible variants of Mesmer.

Want more invuln? Take signets. Want utility? Mirage has none. Want clone generation? Chrono. Want to use veil 4 times as a single person? Chrono. Want a useful shield that’ll help you survive when the fight starts? Chrono.

Want to play the most selfish Mesmer build to exist yet? Even more selfish than base power shatter Mesmer? Play Mirage.

Ryudnard.2587:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmHUfSfz0HA

^
Venom share theif in zerg fight.

That was literally the 2nd most useless thief I have seen in a zerg fight, beaten out only by the “rally bot” thief.

Strider Pj.2193:

Also… the OP noted they were an avid WvW player. The release of a legendary back piece was noted over.. what.. 8 weeks ago? There were countless pip threads, numerous skirmish ticket threads, it was all over team chat on my server..

How does it take the OP until August 25th to realize that they are annoyed they need a tag?

Anywho… legendary = gold sink and this back piece is actually one of the cheapest, and quite frankly THE single most versatile Legendary out there (as a back item that is)

No other legendary weapon/armor can be used on ALL classes, all armor weights and all builds.

To me, a legendary back piece makes more sense than most other things.

To me, the legendary back pieces make the least sense to get from a pragmatic perspective.

The ascended blood ruby backpack can already have its stats reset.

Even if you were to include the cost of pulling 1 thousand infusions out of the back piece before resetting, it comes out cheaper. And you’re unlikely to ever reach that number unless you’re swapping characters 24/7.

Loosmaster.8263:

TheOneWhoSighs.7513:

Loosmaster.8263:

zectra.6978:

The answer is yes. If any skill you use deals damage to another player, you will get credit. Someone mentioned there is a damage threshold, but it isn’t a lot – somewhere like 500 dmg or something.

Retaliation isn’t a skill, it’s a boon. Not sure if that applies.

Poison, burning, bleed, and chill aren’t skills. They’re conditions.

And trust me, if my necro’s inventory problems are a marker for anything, we certainly get loot credit.

But those are applied using a skill or a trait.

Edited my response with more info before you responded, sorry.

Basically, you can apply conditions to someone, and have someone else take them upon themselves without you ever having used an ability on them.

At the end of the day, the source of the damage would still be me.

Just like the source of retaliation damage would still be me, even if it was someone else that gave me the retal boon.

We used to have a retaliation Mesmer build back in the day. Lots of fun, and no problems with getting bags.

Loosmaster.8263:

zectra.6978:

The answer is yes. If any skill you use deals damage to another player, you will get credit. Someone mentioned there is a damage threshold, but it isn’t a lot – somewhere like 500 dmg or something.

Retaliation isn’t a skill, it’s a boon. Not sure if that applies.

Poison, burning, bleed, and chill aren’t skills. They’re conditions.

Conditions which certain classes can take without me using any abilities on them.

Like a guardian using “save yourselves” or a Necro using plague signet.

And trust me, if my necro’s inventory problems are a marker for anything, we certainly get loot credit.

Thieves are worthless in a zerg or large organized group. They can be useful in GvGs with groups that run squishier, but anything beyond 15v15, and the usefulness of a Thief basically becomes 0.

Ranger suffers from the same problems. You just don’t bring anything to a zerg. And if you were going to play Druid, you may as well just play Tempest.

With all said and done, a Thief is a liability in a zerg (Your death will rally someone), and a druid is pretty much a wasted spot.

OP, your suggestion would result in easily the most boring, unrewarding WvW experience imaginable. Even if it were even a partial drop in participation, it would result in groups completely avoiding conflict.

I’m on a server that isn’t T1, because I want actual fights, not just running away and PPT’ing.

JesseBensen.4817:

Many times over the years I have showed a friend Gw2, and inevitably I show them my favorite game mode. The question I always get is “what happens when you die”. Everyone is disappointed by the real answer to that question.

And to be completely honest, the only reason they’re disappointed by the answer is because either:
1. They expected it to be like Runescape’s wilderness for some ridiculous reason, probably because you set that false expectation yourself.

2. You have absolutely 0 flair for the dramatic.

Like, seriously.

Death in this game actually has an effect on a fight.

If you die, you rally an enemy.

If all of you die, you potentially lose whatever you were trying to defend, or lose your chance on whatever you were trying to attack.

Not to mention the humiliation that comes with a wipe for any organized guild. A lot of these guilds have very big egos, and poke fun at you for wiping.

There’s your “punishment”.

If that’s not enough, maybe put a dollar in a jar every time you die.

Aless.5376:

It was 1 button, 1 skill, 1 ability call it whatever u want that came from 1 player. Legit kitten .

To be fair, epi is easily one of the most conditionally good abilities in the game.

You have to have a target with loads of condi on it, and other people need to be near that target, and that target need to not dodge, block, or invuln the epi, as well as you need to not be doing any of that. (Though you could use the unblockable shout I suppose)

Finding that target in WvW isn’t always easy, unless it’s the lord.

In which case, you have one solution. Don’t go anywhere near the lord, give him a wiiiiiiiide breadth.

Honestly speaking though, with 16.9k HP, you’re well within 1 shot KO range for a gun flame. been hit with a 19k one of those on my mesmer. Not fun, not fun.

Although, maybe with 3000 toughness it wouldn’t hit that hard.

Jski.6180:

TheOneWhoSighs.7513:

Like everyone already guessed, it’s an epi.

Or a plague signet proc. Love me some plague signet.

It could also be simply getting hit with a bomb to condis like that have to come from some where. There a lot of builds who can pull off most of that condi dmg outside of the burning yet but once sorges is added in then you will see burns with other condis like that coming form the necro class.

Nah, generally you’re not going to get hits like that without epi or condition transfer. Not from a single person.

Burn guards don’t usually put out 4k worth of bleeds, and Necros don’t usually put out 10k worth of burning.

Do guardians have a trait like necros where blinds can lead to bleeds? If so, it might be possible with a sigil of mischief. But without that, I don’t see a condi guard getting there.

The only other condi generator I can think on that level is a zerker? Maybe?
Idk, OP would definitely know how he got that much condi on him if it were a zerker though.

Sticking with my guns, it’s either condi transfer or epi.

Like everyone already guessed, it’s an epi.

Or a plague signet proc. Love me some plague signet.

Edit:
It also could’ve been a staff 4 from necro.

Basically, you were either hit by epi, or someone transferred their conditions to you.

Honestly.

The simplest way to balance WvW, would be to not have WvW tied to the base servers.

Have a completely separate set of WvW servers people could join, that would fill up on their own, but only with people actually interested in WvW.

And cycle people out of the server if they become inactive for more than a month. (Or, perhaps, reset the populations of each server entirely annually)

This would make it so that each WvW server that is “full”, is full of players that are actually interested in WvW, and are active. Rather than an army of PvE players that have literally never pressed the B button outside of an accident, and have probably rebound that key entirely to RP walk.

Issue is, while this would be balanced, it would also make people pretty mad. What with the difficulties of swapping servers and all.

Dawdler.8521:

TheOneWhoSighs.7513:

Spurnshadow.3678:

TheOneWhoSighs.7513:

Hana.8143:

It’s like the mesmer in 2013 (or 2014 ?), when he had that trait, and took fall damages, and did 20k every sec with the aoe that pop under its feet.

I’m sorry, what?

Chaos storm has never done 20k damage a second.

It was a bug and lasted like 2 weeks. Fun as hell while it lasted. Only affected Chaos Storm from the falling trait.

That lasted for 2 weeks??

Holy crap, I really must be on a different wave length from the developers of this game.

That would’ve received an immediate response of disabling the chaos storm part of the trait from me. Wow….

I seem to recall it was fixed in a matter of hours (patch came out in the late evening EU time, by the next morning it was sadly fixed so we didnt get experience the fun.

Might be remembering some other bug though

If so, that’s good. Weeks for a bug that bad would be pretty absurd.

To be honest, you’re complaining about AFKs on an out manned map, but you wouldn’t have those people there anyway if there wasn’t rewards.

I’d be more concerned about afks when every map is queue’d, than afks on an out manned map.

I basically afk to let my pips tick down when I’m done for the day, and will respond to any “OH MY GOD THEY’RE HITTING GARRI” calls if & when they come.

Otherwise, I wouldn’t be on at all, and you’d still be up a creek with no paddle.

Spurnshadow.3678:

TheOneWhoSighs.7513:

Hana.8143:

It’s like the mesmer in 2013 (or 2014 ?), when he had that trait, and took fall damages, and did 20k every sec with the aoe that pop under its feet.

I’m sorry, what?

Chaos storm has never done 20k damage a second.

It was a bug and lasted like 2 weeks. Fun as hell while it lasted. Only affected Chaos Storm from the falling trait.

That lasted for 2 weeks??

Holy crap, I really must be on a different wave length from the developers of this game.

That would’ve received an immediate response of disabling the chaos storm part of the trait from me. Wow….

To be honest with you, they actually need to go back and rebalance the whole freaking game, and then relaunch it.

The amount of CC is so insanely high in this game, that new bosses literally have to have a “break bar”, where the entire goal is to spam CC up until the bar is gone.

CC is actually incredibly stupid in WvW, because it makes a singular person feel helpless unless they have a big burly Guardian (or 3) in their group to give them stability.

Here’s the circle of WvW balance.

Loads of CC -> Need more stability -> too much boon spam, need more corruption -> even more CC -> Need even more stability -> need even more corruption

Even if you subtracted the power creep that happened damage wise in the game, the power creep that has happened boon, CC, and corruption wise is immense.

The only way I can see this ever actually being fixed, is to do a full rebalance. Because PvE is also going to need to be rebalanced around the fewer strong CCs.

I run a DPS meter pretty much 24/7, and I can honestly say that most of the Reapers I run across are out damaging everyone else in my pug fractals.

I can also say I’ve never seen anyone turned away in a fractal, unless they were afk’ing, or literally had 0 clue how to press buttons on their keyboard.

Some of you guys must have horrible luck with pugs I guess.

It’s about as ridiculous as the qT guide showing condi reaper as 33-34k DPS and then somehow still not recommending them for most raid encounters.

That’s because it requires chill finishers, which will be overrided by both the chronos & tempests in your group.

If it existed in a bubble, it would be great.

Outside of the bubble, it’s just “okay”.

If you’re looking to speed run a raid, ehhhhhhhhhh~~

If you’re pugging a raid, give it a go.

Zenith.7301:

TheOneWhoSighs.7513:

Zenith.7301:

Durzlla.6295:

Zenith.7301:

TheOneWhoSighs.7513:

To be honest, I’m kind of torn on how to approach this.

On one hand, I’m pretty sure axe condi mirage does more damage than base condi or power mesmer.

On the other hand, I agree that the evasion mechanic really holds this spec back in every aspect of the game except 1.

Mirage is a good open world spec, purely because of how fast it can get around with sword ambush

Although, I would probably still do open world with chrono, purely because Chrono comes with 25% run speed by default. And I really don’t want to see another traveler’s rune for as long as I live.

I don’t know. I’d have to see mirage’s numbers on a raid boss before I said base Mesmer was better.

Condi mirage sure as hell does not do more DPS than power mesmer in PvE.

Power mesmer is ahead of condi by as much as 6k DPS and condi mirage is a marginal upgrade over core condi mesmer.

What build is power Mesmer using to get that high? Because the last I saw of the dps tier list power Mesmer was still garbage tier. Which surprised me since I thought the new phantasm Gm + dueling GM with a sword build would do well…

https://qtfy.eu/guildwars/benchmarks-august-balance-patch/

There you go. Pure condi mesmer does better on static large bosses, and yet it’s still behind by 3k+ DPS.

Power mesmer is only 4k DPS behind top specs, and most of his damage is passive through phantasms and sword auto+blurred frenzy, which means actual raid DPS of power mesmers is realistically higher than the other classes with more complex rotations.

I suppose my issue, is that I don’t run in groups that have permanent quickness, permanent might, and permanent fury.

Soooooooo, I’ll never hit those numbers to begin with no matter what I run.

That applies for any spec you run.

It’s not like you have a mesmer spec that can might stack without utterly gutting your damage output, making said might stacking pointless.

And if you don’t do group content, then nothing is relevant to you as any content you can solo by spamming a ranged weapon autoattack is not content worth balancing around.

I don’t think it does, actually.

I think certain specs are more self-proficient than others.

I think most specs don’t require your illusions to have 25 stacks of might + fury as well, in order to do their damage.

But that’s just my 2 cents on the issues with using those benchmarks as a marker for, anything. Really.

I’d rather see DPS metrics from an actually organized raid.

Hackuuna.4085:

TheOneWhoSighs.7513:

Hana.8143:

It’s like the mesmer in 2013 (or 2014 ?), when he had that trait, and took fall damages, and did 20k every sec with the aoe that pop under its feet.

I’m sorry, what?

Chaos storm has never done 20k damage a second.

Why would you use an absolute if you don’t know?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBguZgFv8XA

Wow, how do they even screw that up.

And you’re right, I shouldn’t have said “never”.

Hana.8143:

It’s like the mesmer in 2013 (or 2014 ?), when he had that trait, and took fall damages, and did 20k every sec with the aoe that pop under its feet.

I’m sorry, what?

Chaos storm has never done 20k damage a second.

Zenith.7301:

Durzlla.6295:

Zenith.7301:

TheOneWhoSighs.7513:

To be honest, I’m kind of torn on how to approach this.

On one hand, I’m pretty sure axe condi mirage does more damage than base condi or power mesmer.

On the other hand, I agree that the evasion mechanic really holds this spec back in every aspect of the game except 1.

Mirage is a good open world spec, purely because of how fast it can get around with sword ambush

Although, I would probably still do open world with chrono, purely because Chrono comes with 25% run speed by default. And I really don’t want to see another traveler’s rune for as long as I live.

I don’t know. I’d have to see mirage’s numbers on a raid boss before I said base Mesmer was better.

Condi mirage sure as hell does not do more DPS than power mesmer in PvE.

Power mesmer is ahead of condi by as much as 6k DPS and condi mirage is a marginal upgrade over core condi mesmer.

What build is power Mesmer using to get that high? Because the last I saw of the dps tier list power Mesmer was still garbage tier. Which surprised me since I thought the new phantasm Gm + dueling GM with a sword build would do well…

https://qtfy.eu/guildwars/benchmarks-august-balance-patch/

There you go. Pure condi mesmer does better on static large bosses, and yet it’s still behind by 3k+ DPS.

Power mesmer is only 4k DPS behind top specs, and most of his damage is passive through phantasms and sword auto+blurred frenzy, which means actual raid DPS of power mesmers is realistically higher than the other classes with more complex rotations.

I suppose my issue, is that I don’t run in groups that have permanent quickness, permanent might, and permanent fury.

Soooooooo, I’ll never hit those numbers to begin with no matter what I run.

Hana.8143:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

An all Scourge zerg is easy to kill. Plink at it from range (Scourges can’t do anything notable outside of 900 range) and run them out of life force, then dive in for the kill. Their damage and defense is super tied to life force, so it should be a pretty easy sweep.

Well, I never had problem with life force, cause staff marks unblockable and spam 1, F1 doesn’t require a lot of life force, so basically spamming 1 one or 2 times on the ennemy zerg results in me have 20% life force, plenty of…

Wanna cross a scourge zerg ? well have fun, they’ll all put F1 under their feets, will have 14k barrier stack 25 might, you won’t be able to do damage, nor applying conditions, you’ll lose stab instantly and melt cause conditions, but nice try
Does anyone want to play the game “imagine a way to defeat 40 scourges” ? Or will we be able to see how ridiculous it actually is before everyone is bored of this little game ?

Oh I know how to beat 40 scourges.

Surround them with catapults. No stab + constant knockback =’s no barrier stacking.

Now all we need is a mesmer with the ability to clone catapults….

To be honest, I’m kind of torn on how to approach this.

On one hand, I’m pretty sure axe condi mirage does more damage than base condi or power mesmer.

On the other hand, I agree that the evasion mechanic really holds this spec back in every aspect of the game except 1.

Mirage is a good open world spec, purely because of how fast it can get around with sword ambush

Although, I would probably still do open world with chrono, purely because Chrono comes with 25% run speed by default. And I really don’t want to see another traveler’s rune for as long as I live.

I don’t know. I’d have to see mirage’s numbers on a raid boss before I said base Mesmer was better.