Guild Wars 2

• Fixed the Necromancer being able to put down two wells that deal damage on top of each other. The damage dealt will now only be from the first well placed.
• Fixed Death Shroud’s mobility. The Necromancer in Death Shroud is no longer mobile and is locked into position at the transformation area.
• When attempting to stomp a downed player, Death Shroud automatically activates and interrupts the stomp animation.
• Increased channeling time for all skills by 1/4 of a second.
• Decreased Fear duration on all skills by half.
• Minions no longer attack anything.

I’m guessing something like this. It will be the exact opposite of what everyone expects.

Keitaro Dragonheart.9047:

Yes! Nerf everything we don’t like! Makes perfect sense! And when Thief is rendered useless, whose next, Mesmer? Then when the QQers are done with Mesmer, whose next, Necromancer? Ranger? Guardian? In fact, I have the perfect solution; let’s just remove all the classes, except warrior from the game, since the warrior class is clearly the only class that is completely perfect as is!

Haven’t all the professions you listed been nerfed or tweaked? Mesmer clone generation and line of sight come to mind. That really isn’t helping your argument.

Don’t you think it’s just a little extreme when you do a 3K Steal and a 7.5K Backstab on a toughness build (more than 1700 toughness)? “B-but!” Thieves cry. “That’s only for a glass cannon spec! Surely you’ll strike back and we’ll die in 5 hits!” This may have been the case if it wasn’t for stealth. It makes it easy to run away from a fight and try again. That’s where the major problem lies. That and Caltrops.

Why is it that Mark of Evasion is one of only two dodge traits that has an internal cool down timer?

Selfless Daring (Heals nearby allies) – No cool down. Got nerfed somewhat.
Reckless Dodge (Damage foes) – No cool down.
Evasive Powder Keg (Creates a bomb) – No cool down.
Companion’s Defense (Give protection) – No cool down.
Evasive Purity (Remove blind and poison) – No cool down.
Expeditious Dodger (Gain swiftness) – No cool down.
Feline Grace (Gain endurance) – No cool down.
Fleet of Foot (Remove cripple and weakness) – No cool down.
Power of Inertia (Gain might) – No cool down.
Uncatchable (Leave caltrops behind) – No cool down.
Evasive Arcana (Create an attunement-based spell) – No cool down.
Stop Drop and Roll (Remove burning and chilled) – 10 second cool down.
Deceptive Evasion (Create a clone) – No cool down.
Mark of Evasion (Leave a Mark of Blood) -10 second cool down.

Also, it doesn’t function like Mark of Blood in that it only gives 2 stacks of bleeding instead of 3. It honestly feels that Necromancer always gets the short end of the stick when it comes to similar abilities and traits.

swinsk.6410:

Except if P/D or D/D misses or his CnD gets evaded twice, they are out of init and pretty useless. Wait? Doesn’t mean a thief needs to play well and time his CnD’s perfectly or he will be sitting duck? Yup it does!

With teh cooldown system you don’t need to play as well. You can literally just spam attacks and skills as they come available if you like. With a thief, you cannot do that unless you want to run out of init very quickly and die.

Both have their advantages and disavantages. IMO, neither is more powerful than the other. It all depends on the player behind the class.

What? That entire argument makes no sense. If you miss a skill on any other profession or mistime a skill, it can come back to haunt you. Being primarily a Necromancer, I can’t tell you how many times someone dodged through all of my marks. The difference being that my marks have long CDs, so I’m forced to switch to Scepter/Dagger or wait for the CDs to expire. God forbid I miss Enfeebling Blood, too. That’s like 1000 damage per second that I miss by not having those skills connect. Other professions don’t have the luxury of spamming the same skill over and over because we can’t.

Also, Thief and Mesmer are the only professions that can stealth, break target lock, and reset a fight. Failing an attack, running out of initiative, and then running away while being stealthed is far too common.

Take it from a Condition Necromancer; Corrupt Boon is the culprit. It has a low cool down with the Master of Corruption trait and turns stability into fear 100% of the time since you can’t evade it while using Dagger Storm. Also, when using my staff mark that causes fear, “Immune” pops up when it gets tripped when Dagger Storm (or any form of stability) goes over it.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

Because EVERY patch they release that STILL has bugs and issues that they SAID they fixed does MORE damage to them as a company and the Player base will only get more and more annoyed.

I doubt VERY much that taking a bit longer to actually make sure the update WORKS and that bug fixes are actually fixes then having them release updates where bugs they said they had fixed not only had not been fixed but the “fix” they did actually made it WORSE

Sure can use the excuse oh its not the top prioritey or what ever, but how do we know? aint as if we actually hear from them other then to say something meaningless like “we are looking into it”

Take the thread about loading screen issues – it took THREE days for one of them to post the usual “we are looking into it” and then NOTHING. The thread was made 9 days ago…9 days and ONE meaningless post no update nothing…

We seem to be going in circles. We’ve entered an infinity loop. Sometimes, they don’t actually know what causes these problems. Hence, “we are looking into it.” I’d like more response from the developers on these boards rather than just on reddit, too, but they seem to rather like that place. Sometimes, they can’t give definitive answers and they can’t always give a detailed response to every single bug. They can’t create a patch every single day. Development schedules for them probably don’t work that way.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

They could have a test realm – use the ability and see oh it doesnt work, better change it so it does work. However no they dont, they just release it. Like i said they either do no testing or very little. Why do you think several other big MMO has Public severs for the sole reason of testing patches before release? WoW does it, Rift does it pretty much everyone does it

Yet Anet doesnt. Of course i wouldnt expect them to be able to find EVERY bug but the ones that are CLEAR to see such as the 2 i mentioned above that bug out about 50% of the time, hell i have used RTL 3 times in a row and have it bug out on me EVERY time.

Then again we are talking about the same company that STILL havent fixed issues and bugs that were in Beta and that were known for not exactly being stellar when it came to patches in GW1 – pretty sure it took like 5! yes FIVE years to fix a huge issue with one of the classes and guess what they over did it and made it REALLY bad.

This would delay the patch which is something they cannot afford at this point. Why would they delay a patch because not every single thing they wanted to fix wasn’t working as they intended? It’s best to fix chunks and then go back to fix what they either broke or missed. I hate using this argument, but those games have been out for years, so comparing their development cycle to this one’s isn’t feasible. Young games tend to have more issues while older games have more structure.

And just because it’s clear to you, doesn’t mean that it’s a priority for them. They have a list and they will go down it. You’ll just have to wait patiently. There’s no sub fee, so you can just read the patch notes every once in a while and wait until you’re pleased.

Khalifahaze.6045:

We all know the balancing and bug fixing process isn’t easy and doesnt happen over night but he does have a point. Anets way of going about this is less than stellar, probably the worst I’ve ever seen tbh.

It’s not terrible, but it isn’t great. It’s average. Do I want to see more from them in a shorter time frame? Yes. Am I qualified to make this assertion or decide which issues need the most work? No. I don’t completely trust their ability to balance the game and make bug fixes, but I trust them over random forum goers who think they can back seat develop.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

Of course i know its not easy – but guess what IS easy – TESTING, which they clearly either do NONE or very little otherwise they would see most of the changes they make actually break the trait/skill take RTL and MG they SAID they were “fixed” yet they are NOT…Testing would have shown that

And what are you basing this on? The fact that bugs continue to exist past patches? As I’ve said to you in another thread, in programming when you fix something, you usually break something, too. In house testing for an MMO is nigh impossible because you can’t get a consistent result with only a handful of people compared to a major player base. Developers rarely catch the bugs that get through due to their own fix. That’s why major patch notes are 1.0, 1.1, 1.2_a, 1.2_b, etc. It’s because the initial patch was brought out, it broke something or something didn’t work as intended, and then they did hot fixes without a patch roll back.

Their response time is slow, but they have an extreme amount of bugs to fix and bugs will continue to exist and increase even when they fix others.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

Typhoon Blue.3698:

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

Anet as one of the WORST balancing teams – if you can call 2 people a “team” i have seen. It amazes me how they can fix issues that HELP a class and yet FAIL to fix issues that make a class WORSE – talking Ele and RTL/MG being STILL bugged despite them saying its “fixed” and then destroy EA because people USED it :/

This game doesnt stand a chance at becoming an Esport. Not now, not EVER.

Are you still throwing a tantrum? It’s already been explained that it isn’t only two people. The two people Jon was referring to were the two head designers. They have their own staff. They even stickied that response.

Holy crap, that makes it WORSE that its a “team” and they still manage to mess everything up :/

Also, can you link this thread, i am interested in what it says.

Here you go.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/The-teams-that-work-on-PvP-WvW-Balance/first#post818357

You make it seem like development is some kind of easy process in which you can fix things in a few hours! Maybe they should hire you. You can bring your own whip.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

Anet as one of the WORST balancing teams – if you can call 2 people a “team” i have seen. It amazes me how they can fix issues that HELP a class and yet FAIL to fix issues that make a class WORSE – talking Ele and RTL/MG being STILL bugged despite them saying its “fixed” and then destroy EA because people USED it :/

This game doesnt stand a chance at becoming an Esport. Not now, not EVER.

Are you still throwing a tantrum? It’s already been explained that it isn’t only two people. The two people Jon was referring to were the two head designers. They have their own staff. They even stickied that response.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

The LEAST we should expect is to have ANY sort of communication would be the start, they ignore everyone. The “balance” team needs to be addressed and its clear that it should have along time ago.

The people in charge of implementing said changes needs to be revised – Do they not do ANY testing before releasing a patch, not rocket science to check to make sure the change actually works before coming out and saying that something is “fixed” when in fact they make it WORSE and not bother saying or doing anything about it (RLT, MG for example)

They just did an AMA.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/13tuac/im_the_studio_design_director_on_guild_wars_2_ama/

All your other suggestions are based on unfounded information and opinions. I take it you don’t know anything about game development. Doing in house tests for an MMO is nearly impossible and fixing one thing usually leads to breaking another. I want results, too, but let’s try to not let our personal feelings cloud reality.

As it stands, I don’t trust them completely. Their way of handling things is lacking. But they’re the developers, so they have a leg up on the average forum poster on how to handle their game.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

Yet we are paying customers, i guess that means nothing

It doesn’t mean you can do whatever you want, that’s for sure. I’d love answers, too, but most people are going about it the wrong way. You’re “calling them out” or threatening them that you’re going to leave. It’s akin to throwing a tantrum. Most private places would just kick you out even if you were a paying customer.

Tell them that their stats are worsened by the down scaling system and their gear only exists to fill the holes created by it. You know, use the truth. That and find a different group.

ZLE.8293:

gamefreak.5673:

You complain that one type of skill (channeled) can track you while you are in stealth.

Do you think that if i start to Unload against a warrior and he pops Shield Stance the channeling should continue trough it,because it’s already started?
Or trough Guardians Bubble?
Or trough Engineers Shrink?
Or trough Mist Form?

Why this classes have such abilities and suddenly Thief doesn’t?
…..Well because he is given Stealth to help him prevent damage(not to help him change clothes w/o being seen).And thats why we all think it isn’t intended.
And BTW it isn’t one type of skill.Leaps like HS and Eviscerate also hit you if the guy have autotarget Option enabled.

The Thief’s stealth isn’t invulnerability and I don’t think it should be treated as such. All the profession abilities you listed are still affected by bleeding, poison, and burning conditions, so even those have weaknesses.

dre.8973:

why do we even bother, they don’t read these, they don’t give a f – i’m rolling a necro.

Rolling a Necro is probably the worst thing you can do. Roll a Warrior. They will never be touched.

No. This event should be on the other side of the Sea of Sorrows at Lion’s Arch.

Delryn.7235:

Also you’ve clearly never played an elementalist, not only does pretty much almost (almost) every single one (except for the dagger) of their abilities have a cast time, but they usually have a REALLY long cast time. Our reviving signet for example has a 2 second cast time, theirs has a 4 1/2 second cast time.

You clearly like making bold statements while being horribly wrong at the same time. The only professions I haven’t played in SPvP are Thief and Ranger because I like face-to-face man fightin’. Even though I’ve played Elementalist the least out of the ones I do play, it still takes up 12% of my total earned glory in SPvP. I mostly use cantrips which, as Berullos pointed out, are instant. There’s also another flaw in your example that Berullos also pointed out: Elementalists have double the amount of weapon skills of any other profession in the game. Even switching attunements can be counted as an attack if specced correctly since switching can come with an attack and a boon.

But let’s take into account other professions, too. Shouts are instant cast. Many of the Guardian’s utility skills are instant. All of the Warrior’s stance utility skills are instant and only the banners have a 1 second channeling time. Many of the Ranger’s skills are instant and only one is as long as a 1 second channeling time. Most of the Thief skills are instant or have only a 1/2 second channeling time. Imagine if the Mesmer had to channel for a full second before Feedback landed on a target or to use Mirror Images. Do you know how many skills the Necromancer has that are instant? 3 out of 20. Every other skill has to be channeled or has some kind of delay. And this is just for utility skills. A lot of the weapon skills are worse.

Do you want to know why people including myself think this is a slow profession? It’s because it is.

I think the first reply to this thread is the best one. It lays out why the video is anecdotal to say the least. I couldn’t have put it better myself.

So I’m happily playing Necromancer. I think I’m one of the few people that actually likes it. Having the power to put on endless stacks of bleeds on something and turning the tables with Corrupt Boon when your opponent stacks a bunch of boons on themselves really makes me smile. But there’s one issue I’ve had when switching from another profession to Necromancer: Necromancer just feels so kitten slow.

I honestly think it’s all the meaningless cast times for pretty much every single ability. Only one ability on my current hot bar (running a Corruption build that emphasizes condition damage and weakness) doesn’t have a casting time. Every other class I play feels so fluid, but the moment I play Necromancer, I worry about interrupting myself more than having my opponent interrupting me. I think that’s one of the major underlying problems.

Another problem for me is that you still get the condition even though you either don’t have someone targeted or you’re blinded when you use some of the Corruption utility skills. Why can’t it be like the Warrior’s adrenaline skill where if you miss, it goes on a shorter cool down with no penalty if you miss?

I just feel like the pace of the Necromancer is considerably slower than other professions and that some of the skills really don’t need such unnecessary casting times and penalties.

I love the combination, but there are two massive flaws: it’s another glass cannon build and the Flesh Golem’s knockdown is unreliable. I tend to shy away from things that offer zero extra toughness.

As long as stun locking doesn’t kill people in less than 2 seconds, it should be fine. It’s the whole speed of the encounter that I can’t stand. Someone else said it in another thread before: battles should be an intricate dance where the one with the most skill comes out on top. It shouldn’t be left to a burst damage spec where if your stun breaker is on cool down, you’re screwed.

That was a pretty good match a few seconds ago, but can someone explain what the guy meant when the guardian was blocking attacks? Was he abusing a bug?

I live right in the path of the nor’easter. Aren’t things supposed to start long after 3 PM EST? I heard it’s supposed to get bad on Monday into Tuesday.

Taurethion.7302:

cringes Reminds me of the people who handed out RAISINS for Halloween…

Or going to the local dentist’s house and he hands out floss. Really now, the jerk.

Dancing Jesus.2873:

Typhoon Blue.3698:

nerva.7940:

Scepter has no use in pve.

Except the fact that confusion is a hard hitting condition when stacked with a condition build. Honestly, the amount of people that doubt the power of confusion in this game…

>confusion
>pve

i shiggy diggy. mobs attack way too slow in pve for confusion to be useful.

You can tell when a monster is going to attack and even if it doesn’t attack immediately, it lasts for a good 4-5 seconds. You pop it as a burst and then switch to your other weapon to deal your main damage. Don’t worry, anon! You’ll get there some day! Whoops. Wrong board.

nerva.7940:

Scepter has no use in pve.

Except the fact that confusion is a hard hitting condition when stacked with a condition build. Honestly, the amount of people that doubt the power of confusion in this game…

Sollanon.8450:

Confusion is not very useful on mobs because they don’t always spam skills. This makes confusion very unreliable on mobs. This debuff is probably much better if you’re pvping because people are constantly using and spamming skills.

I couldn’t disagree more. Bosses in dungeons have Defiance, so CCs don’t interrupt as often. It’s quite easy to predict a swing and even putting it on randomly might end up with a high burst of damage if you stack it correctly. Trust me, after years playing Monster Hunter, learning tells gets easier. Even if the monster doesn’t look at you funny, it’s better to apply confusion rather than not just in case. Clones and illusions are easy to replace. With bleeding and confusion, you’ll be out damaging many other condition builds as a Mesmer.

The build is 0/20(II and X)/0/20(V [or IV if you have a problem with conditions on yourself] and VII)/30(V, VII, X) for dungeons. The weapons are Staff and Scepter/Pistol with the utility skills Mirror Images, Decoy or Feedback for ranged enemies, and Signet of Illusions. Time Warp is your elite. When you start a fight, throw down iDuelist and Mirror Images. After they unload, use Cry of Frustration and Confusing Images for 11 stacks of confusion that should do well over 2000 damage. Switch to staff, cast Warlock and Retreat along with a dodge for an extra clone. Throw down a Chaos Storm and spam 1. The target should get tons of bleeding and anyone standing near it should get some boons. When Mirror Images is almost back up, switch and repeat. Then, all you have to do is give quickness to your melee teammates every once in a while.

I disagree with you on Illusionary Elasticity. The possible reason why it’s in illusions might be because some of the illusions you summon have a bounce effect (makes a bleeding/confusion staff and trident build even possible). That’s only if your illusions also get the trait which may or may not be the case.

Other than that, these suggestions are probably the most logical and practical suggestions I’ve seen. Bravo! I honestly hope Arena Net considers them.

I don’t know. Your image looks like a texture glitch to me. Why would one of the hands be holding a grey boob orb, but not the other?

Sleaze.3748:

Um I never said phantasms are our main DPS…

Sleaze.3748:

Phantasms are obviously our DPS skills while Clone skills do almost no DPS at all unless they shatter. They act as our defense unless we sacrifice them for more DPS which makes total sense. But why would I sacrifice a phantasm for less DPS than it can do on its own? This is counter productive and phantasms actually make shattering less reliable since they have so much less HP. This is why I would say to unlink Phantasms from shattering and acting as clones completely… Now I am sure lots of people will hate this since it will prevent them from summoning 3 phantasms and letting them do the work, but personally I would rather a more active role in the DPS than having my NPCs do it all.

It’s like you yourself don’t read what you write!

I seriously wonder if people read posts before replying to them. Not once in my post did I say that Mesmer DPS was poor or that I had any trouble soloing in PvE or PvP…

And maybe you should read the full responses instead of the first line of a post, hmm? Not once did I say the DPS was small for phantasms. What I said was that the Mesmer is a flashy class that can do anything and that relying on your phantasms as your main source of damage is limiting yourself.

Sleaze.3748:

I think everyone can agree that Mesmers do well in PvP and even 1v1 PvE. But as soon as you take on a group of mobs especially one in a DE then the class gets extremely awkward and the most you can do it tab and auto attack each mob before they die.

Why is it so awkward in DEs?

Mostly cause illusions and phantasms either waste their cool down on a target that is going down fast or die themselves before doing much of anything. This leaves the mesmer in a constant cool down status getting lucky to have a phantasm get off his attack in time.

Don’t even think about shattering…. this mechanic just takes way too long between summoning your clones and then waiting for them to run to the mob (and possibly even getting destroyed before attacking). By the time this happens your target is down and shatter is wasted. Once again leaving you tabbing and auto attacking everything in sight.

While I agree with the other posts that some better and more reliable AoE skills would be extremely useful in DEs, I think they should first work on making the shatter mechanic useful in these situations. I think a decent start to this would to stop clones from shattering on targets death. Sure, they still have a problem of getting 1 shot by AoEs but at least it would allow us to maybe build up some clones in a DE to shatter with.

Now again I am talking strictly PvE and not PvP, but I think phantasms should be treated more as a skill that goes off once and disappears, not taking up any clone slots (this is basically how that act now since they are often killed immediately).

Phantasms are obviously our DPS skills while Clone skills do almost no DPS at all unless they shatter. They act as our defense unless we sacrifice them for more DPS which makes total sense. But why would I sacrifice a phantasm for less DPS than it can do on its own? This is counter productive and phantasms actually make shattering less reliable since they have so much less HP. This is why I would say to unlink Phantasms from shattering and acting as clones completely… Now I am sure lots of people will hate this since it will prevent them from summoning 3 phantasms and letting them do the work, but personally I would rather a more active role in the DPS than having my NPCs do it all.

Now I am not saying these are the only problems with mesmer, just saying this is why DEs and PvEing in groups is just extremely awkward at the moment.

I am sick of people thinking that our phantasms are our main source of DPS. They are secondary to the damage we can dish out and the boons/conditions we can deal.

Use a greatsword. It’s great for soloing and events. The Phantasm and clone attacks not only spawn them right next to the target monster, but have quick cast times and have short cool downs. This makes shattering faster because they’re standing right there. Then you switch to whatever weapon and repeat.

And phantasms serving their purpose and then disappearing is a God awful idea for two reasons. First, the attack rate of phantasms is much shorter than the cool down. If the clone survives long enough to do a second attack it was well worth the cast. Second, sometimes you need to spend those phantasms on emergency shatters. It’s good to have a backup couple of illusions to be able to get away from an attacking monster or to be invulnerable for a short duration.

I’m thinking that the people who complain about shatters are the same people who can’t tell when a monster is going to attack and think that Cry of Frustration is useless. Listen, this profession takes a lot of thought and well-planned moves. It’s not a standard “hit button and deal a ton of damage” profession. Once people learn the primary function of the Mesmer, which is mainly support while dealing consistent burst damage through various attacks, they will stop complaining about non-issues.

The only thing I would change would be to have the clones/phantasms teleport to the targets location to do their AoE shatter to make stacking confusion easier. However, the real issues with the class are the numerous glitches and bugs plaguing it. The Signet of Illusions doesn’t apply the health increase on phantasm/clone spawn. It does it literally a second after it spawns. This causes the phantasm/clone to lose at least half of its health right after it spawns which is not okay. Cry of Frustration is also bugged. It only lasts for 3 seconds rather than 4 which is indicated on the tool tip and is barely effected by “duration time up” traits and runes. It’s totally bugged. Fix the bugs because the mechanics are fine.

I have more of a problem with the fact that I teleport into the enemy rather than away from.

It would probably help to not sound like a jerk (both of you). It seems you have a bit of a utility problem. Using your story, I have no idea what weapons he was using. I’m going to assume he uses mostly dagger/dagger. Maybe he’s using something like this:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQRAoY8alUmaPHaS8E9JA;TgAA1CoowxgjAHLOOck4A
Try this build:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fgAQNAsdWlwzaqXUTqGaNJiJFBHFeqAzh6B4ZdfXpCzGA;TgAA1CoowxgjAHLOOck4A
(Might say it’s a bad link when you click on it. Copy and paste it into your address bar.)
If he opens with stealth or steal, he’s preparing for a big move. Dodge. When he does Shadow Refuge (the one with the house), run away. Unless he’s standing in it the entire time, he doesn’t gain the stealth from it. Counter his stealth and conditions with Null Field. Stand in the fields you make! Spawn as many clones as you can using a combination of Mirror Images and your weapon skills. Shatter them. One use of Cry of Frustration with 3 illusions will cause him to do over 500 damage to himself per attack for 3 seconds (I’m still kittened that it should be 4!). If he’s using Haste, this is a death sentence. Use Decoy in emergencies. Use Temporal Curtain to interrupt him. On the sword/focus set, hit 3 to spawn a clone, then hit 5 to spawn the Warden, then hit 3 again to immobilize, and then hit 2 to swing your sword wildly. This will cause the Warden to land every hit while you are hitting him with Blurred Frenzy. Shatter. Shatter. Shatter. Your phantasms’ damage should be secondary to what you can dish out, not the other way around.

Moa Morph should always be a last resort. If you’re seriously using it as a means to beat someone you don’t stand a chance against, you should rethink your play style. I prefer Mass Invisibility, but in your case, I would use Time Warp. Time Warp with the sword/focus combo is deadly and almost inescapable.

Coincidentally, my consultation costs 1 gold. Get it back so you can pay me.

All damage in this game can be calculated and known beforehand. I keep having to say this in every thread on this board (and only this board) that confusion is one of the most underrated and under used status afflictions in this game. Used as a supplement, it’s amazing. On a condition build, it’s a necessity. The damage that stacks from it deal several thousand damage on enemy attacks; far more than a bleeding build. People who make Phantasm builds are limiting themselves. Phantasms are not your primary source of damage and they are certainly not your only option as a Mesmer. Use some shatters!

Perceived utility in dungeons:
Warriors > Guardians > Engineers = Mesmers > Elementalists = Necromancers > Thieves > Rangers
The truth:
Warriors = Guardians = Engineers = Mesmers > Elementalists = Necromancers > Thieves > Rangers

Two Warriors, a Guardian, a Mesmer, and an Engineer can pretty much destroy all dungeons. Rangers bring almost nothing to the table. A Thief’s massive damage and stealth isn’t as effective as it is in PvP. Mesmers can make a pretty nasty condition build, has a ton of condition removal, has a ton of buffs, and can support at range.

Got me there. I guess you can quickly stack 8 confusions with that.

Edit: Oh, but I forget whether or not the phantasms also take your condition damage stats. It might be still glitched. I don’t know.

I never posted weapon combos. Anything+Pistol would definitely be used for bleeding builds because Phantasmal Duelist is a machine gun that has 8 chances to crit. I consider both offhand sword and pistol to be equally viable for confusion. If you find yourself getting attacked often, the two blocks that spawn clones is useful. Both the sword and the pistol’s phantasms hits hard and generally stay away from combat. The pistol stun is kind of useless unless you like removing 1 stack of Defiance every 25 seconds from a boss.

I’m sorry, I’m probably going to start a couple fires from this, but I have to say something. I hope you read and consider this.

Confusion in dungeons is simply the best. It does at least 3 times the amount of damage bleed does. Monsters in this game like to chain attacks and are predictable. Every couple of swings monsters do literally take off thousands. It’s amazing on bosses and it is spammable. Mesmer is the only class that can stack it reliably. Their ethereal combo field craps out confusion on projectile finishers. Scepter 3 is only on a 15 second cool down. There’s even a trait which adds 50 condition damage and CD reduction for scepter skills by 20%.

Here’s the damage calculation:
10 + (1.5 * Level) + (0.15 * Condition Damage) per stack per skill use
compared to bleeding:
2.5 + (0.5 * Level) +( 0.05 * Condition Damage) per stack per second

So a level 80 Mesmer with, say, 315 condition damage will do 177 damage per stack and bleeding will do 58 damage per stack. Scepter 3 will add 5 stacks for 5 seconds resulting in 885 damage per attack. The Illusion trait line is practically made for shattering and adding confusion. In one go, you can apply up to 13 stacks of confusion by yourself in one burst (Cry of Frustration (6) + Illusionary Mage (1 constantly) + Confusing Enchantments (1) + Confusing Images (5)). That’s 2301 per enemy attack in this example. Sharper images needs you to keep your illusions alive, but keeping illusions alive reliably is laughable at the moment with various glitches in traits and utility skills. Winds of Chaos randomly procs only 1 stack of bleeding.

Don’t let people tell you that confusion builds aren’t viable. They’re completely wrong. As it stands, Confusion is a very misunderstood and underrated status. Even with the glitches in duration, it’s still amazing. Leave the confusing to the Mesmers and the bleeding to the other classes that can apply it more reliably than us. It’s one of the only status attacks that we really even have.

Actually, I posted this on reddit and someone informed me that penalty from scaling down to lower levels is extremely harsh. Link to post:
http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/113xm9/downscaling_in_dungeons/c6j3pre
Basically, you need top tier gear if you’re a level 80 because your stats will be brought down severely by the down scaling system. The same doesn’t apply for people around that level.

Results of the test:
In a level 35 instance, your base stats (no armor) when your character is above level 35 are 256 points.
You get less stat points per trait point as a level 80 than a level 35. The game assumes you have high level gear and penalizes you for it.
High level armor will always outclass a level 35’s armor, but not by much. Level 80 armor has more stats to offer, but it has greater gaps to fill.
The amount of traits a character can have equipped plays a significant role in dungeon running. It gives a level 80 character more flexibility and utility than a player at the level cap.

Conclusions:
You might be wasting your time waiting for a full level 80 group in lower level dungeons. Your gear does not make your character. Your ability to play does.
Give people a chance. Ask them in a polite way how they are geared and traited. If they sound like they know what they’re talking about, give them the benefit of the doubt. This game is forgiving. It seems like the players aren’t.
Give new players advice and they may follow it.
If you are standing around in front of a dungeon saying, “Guardian LFG AC EM,” you are doing it wrong. Give details about your build/armor. Instead, try saying, “40 Guardian LFG AC EM. Support build with toughness.” I guarantee that will draw someone’s attention rather than being the fourth person to say LFG.
To the level 35s who never ran a dungeon in explorable mode: it is not a cakewalk. I hate to be that guy, but you have to consider that your level 28 magic find armor with magic find runes might not cut it. Spend some extra time purchasing or crafting better armor and weapons. They make a world of difference.

Good luck with your pugging efforts, everyone. I apologize for this lengthy post. I hope I answered some questions in regards to the down scaling system, and made finding a group more efficient.

Gigantic post. Thank you and good luck to all who read it. My results and conclusions are in the next post.

One of the things I’ve noticed when pugging dungeons is that level 80s like to form groups with other level 80s. The thought process behind this is a flawed, yet understandable one: level 80 characters generally have better gear and are more experienced. But what if you’re rolling an alt and you want to complete dungeons with this character rather than your other one? It’s a good idea to do dungeon runs from the time you can get in them so you can get an exotic set of armor shortly after you become 80. It’s also good experience and it’s fun. You get to level 30, clear Ascalon Catacombs story mode, get to level 35, and decide to do an explorable mode. You’re confident that you know what you’re doing. You display your need for a group in map chat. No one answers. You try to whisper to a group looking for members, but they say they’re looking for other level 80s with full exotic armor. Perfect. In order to do a level 35 dungeon, you need to be level 80. That’s not what the developers intended. You should be able to complete a dungeon at the level it caps at. I went full nerd mode and did a test with a guild mate which reveals that a level 80’s base stats are lower than a level 35’s base stats in a level 35 instance.

I set up the test by purchasing two sets of identical level 30 armor and retraining our current traits to 0. In this case it was a full set of strong student gear that gives only power and precision. I gave all 6 of the pieces to my friend. He came in full level 80 rare armor. It’s not the best example; I would have preferred exotics, but at the time it’s what he had and this test was about stat scaling. When we first entered the dungeon, we stripped down naked (kinky). Both of our stats, when we had no armor, were capped at 256. This includes all stats; everything was the same. His default stats before down scaling at level 80 were 916 while mine were 266. Tried the same thing with the cheap armor I bought for both of us and they matched. “Well, that doesn’t prove anything,” some naysayers may retort. “So what if both stats are the same? Level 80s have more trait points than a level 35.” This is where the down scaling system shows how clever and brutal it can be to level 80s.

When researching down scaling, I ran into this post on reddit:
http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/y2ggw/complaint_dynamic_level_scaling_allows_stats_to/
It seems that when compared to a natural level 35 character (or whatever the cap may be), a level 80 will have less stats when both characters are naked. When we both put points into our trait lines (he did 20/30/0/20/0 and I did 10/10/0/5/0), I discovered that it’s a 10-40 negative point difference for the level 80 character when compared to the level 35 character. His stats were 312, 340, 256, and 312 while my stats were 352, 352, 256, and 304. The game assumes you will have higher stats from your armor, so it doesn’t give you the full point per trait. The game artificially creates a gap because it expects you to fill it with your superior armor. This is possibly the most important part of the down scaling system that people are completely unaware of.

When both characters donned their armor, their stats balanced out. This happened in both the cases regarding trait points on and off. Naturally, with rarer, higher level armor, the level 80 has a stat advantage. Since most armor at that level have 3 stats compared to 2 on level 35 armor, it was easier to fill the gaps that the trait points created. However, the difference is not significant. It was only a 10-30 point gain for each stat. The armor stats scale down, too. This is because it’s just being added to the main stat number and that number is being adjusted. My friend had 312 points in power after traiting. His armor boosted this stat to only 367. His armor would have given him an extra 197 power at level 80, but only gave him an extra 55. Put into terms anyone can understand, this is like giving a level 35 character 100-300 extra hit points if they have vitality gear. The only significant difference between level 35s and 80s is that traits themselves are not scaled down. At level 35, you have a total of 5 traits. At level 80, you can have 9 more traits than a level 35. This adds flexibility or mastery of a certain aspect of battle that a level 80 can have, but a level 35 cannot.

I found a bug while I was on my Warrior today. I had the trait “Missile Deflection” and used a shield to block the Mesmer’s #1 scepter ability for all 3 hits. When the third and final projectile landed back on the Mesmer, something interesting happened. I suddenly had my own clone that was casting the Mesmer #1 skill at my opponent. Needless to say, this is amazing. If only I could shatter it.

I know I anger a lot of people with my various Mercy Rune builds, and the downed state adds a depth to the game that isn’t available in a lot of other games. I would prefer it didn’t go anywhere.

I’m certain this has been suggested before, but I didn’t see it and search doesn’t seem to work for me. I’m just going to post it anyway because the more people who agree on this, the better.

One of the problems I see in WvWvW is that one server completely dominates the map while the other two are in disarray. This problem compounds when you have players that aren’t focused on the objective and instead run around in a big group attacking any other big group they come across. Sadly, in many cases, the big group they often come across is the other server getting stomped and both servers stalemate each other at the entrance of their borderlands (endless lake and briar pushes come to mind). Then the dominating server runs around and takes everything while the other two servers protect their 10 point towers from each other.

At this time, we cannot communicate with the other servers. We cannot tell them, “Stop attacking us. Attack the other team that holds 90% of WvW. What are you doing?” However, if chat between the servers were available to everyone, it would end in taunting and all around crappy chat.

So how about just having commanders being able to chat with other commanders from different servers? Being able to relay messages to the other losing team might actually provide a way for the “team up against the stronger server” model that you guys were aiming for. Right now, that model doesn’t work because we lack that communication. It won’t completely eliminate mindless mobs going for the closest objective, but it might mitigate this common problem.