Guild Wars 2

I’ve just never encountered a situation where it would be wildly beneficial to switch targets before the target is dead. You usually attack things until they are dead.

So you are going to switch targets and stop dpsing the boss… to go kill some adds…..

The adds will die quickly, possibly before your axe 3 is finished cooling down….

Then your illusions die and you have to resummon them back to the boss……

….

So it would have been better to just leave your illusions dpsing the boss while you go take care of adds by yourself.

I mean I grant that it could be useful sometimes but like I said these things are highly situational. We are talking about 1 or 2 raid bosses. There’s tons of other content in the game. So we have an ability that is super situational that might shine during about 1% of the game…. Forgive me if I’m not jumping for joy lol…

I got a fever!

And the only prescription is MORE BANK SPACE!

Alright folks time for show and tell. Lets take a closer look at all the pictures YOU posted.

I would just like to say if you want to actually make a point about the shape of someones nose, you should take screen shots FROM THE SAME ANGLE. Regardless I think anyone with eye balls in their head can see these noses are basically all the same.

I’m still waiting for someone to explain how her ethnicity has anything to do with the content of her character. AKA why is this important. Why does it matter.

I’m also still waiting for someone to actually prove that her nose is different in gw2 from gw1. Because that nose looks basically the same to me.

And if your argument is that her hair is different… What? African people can’t have straight hair?

Snowywonders.1378:

Rev is about managing energy

Except that there’s no way to manage it. You can… auto attack… or swap. Very engaging gameplay…

Yeah… I wanted this over 2 years ago, but no one seemed to care at the time…

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/revenant/Energy-2-0/first

@OP

Yeah that is artistically a train wreck… inside a dumpster fire.

Ephemiel.5694:

People are really letting those nostalgia googles blind them if they think LWS1 was “amazing” with “great gameplay and story”.

I remember it being much worse, extremely laggy and with Scarlet “lorebreaker” Briar constantly involved.

I remember the forums being on fire most of the time because people hated Scarlet and felt the story was random and stupid. It had almost no ties to GW1. It was like Anet were just making up random things. Not to mention the content was extremely shallow, often being completed in just 2 hours or less (with a boring collection or achievement to fill in). I’m glad they changed their delivery methods.

Carighan.6758:

Honestly I feel as if at this point, only the most trivial of changes would make it through. It’s 1 month to release.

This pretty much, unfortunately…

Remember way back in October 2016 when the “papaya leak” came out? That was 11 months ago and it was AFTER they had already been working on the specs.

So they have been working on gen2 elite specs for more than a year. They aren’t about to scrap what they have and go back to formula.

I just don’t think a 1 sec dodge animation really lowers your DPS that much. Therefor being able to continue attacking during that 1 sec isn’t going to make a huge difference.

Really, the best use of this ability is when channeling a long cast like Confusing Images. That way you don’t interrupt yourself. However, CI is the only channel cast mesmer has besides Blurred Frenzy, and Blurred Frenzy is already an evade… Good job.

TheFrighteningFrenchFry.3275:

Alpha.1308:

e-specs were SUPPOSED to add something new, mesmer being bound to a target is so obnoxious to deal with

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Axes_of_Symmetry
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Illusionary_Ambush

The usefulness of this is going to be highly situational. For mobs that die quickly you are going to be on cooldown half the time you need to switch your illusions, and mobs that die slowly (like a boss) you probably don’t want to switch your illusions because its better to keep them dpsing the boss. I think people are really overselling mirage because they read a skill description and think it sounds great. Things are a lot different when you actually get into combat and deal with the full breadth of game mechanics.

Levetty.1279:

I mean if they gave it to us as Sword skill 3 I would like finally having a leap…

Oh one can only dream…

…but they say the reason we get a worse dodge is because we can carry on attacking through it…

I really want to test the raw dps benefit of attacking while dodging. Like how much of a dps increase is this really? Being able to attack during a 3/4 sec window? People throw this around like it’s the bees knees, but how good is it really? Probably negligible I’d reckon.

Mikkel.8427:

But we’ll probably get something that grants a bonus to Deceptions, and it will likely be more useful to thieves than it is for us.

Quoted for sad truth…

Ntiruyogwa.5786:

I have a better idea:

Make Kormir look exactly the way she has always looked since gw1.

Wouldn’t that require a hair change and nose job then?

+1 for changing the statues appearance, it does not ressemble her true Elonan ethnicity.

Her statue and all the images shown in this thread looks exactly like she did in gw1. There is no need to change her ethnicity if it already matches her original character design.

Why are you so obsessed with changing her ethnicity? What does her skin color have to do with the content of her character?

Levetty.1279:

The problems with all these ideas for Mirage Mirror is it require more effort on Anets part then sticking this art asset in the game and then moving on to design 100 new skills for Weaver.

Snarky pessimism aside (i love it), you’re pretty much right. At this point Anet is looking to make number tweaks like + or – 10% damage, or make an animation faster. They aren’t looking to completely scrap a mechanic and rebuild it from a new concept (which is what mirage needs…). So I’m planning to just play scourge or weaver this expac instead, unless Anet pulls and uncharacteristic overhaul of the mirage.

It’s called Mirage because from a distance the spec looks amazing like water in a desert, but when you look at it up close the mechanics and balance disappears and you are left with nothing but sand and disappointment.

mortrialus.3062:

How am I grasping at straws? You’re the one that said Alacrity only works on shatter skills and that’s why Chronomancer is the shatter spec.

1. shatter gives alacrity
2. alacrity speeds up all skills, including shatters
3. you keep shattering, you keep getting alacrity
4. you keep alacrity up, you shatter more often

That’s why chrono is a shatter spec.

edit in bold

TheOneWhoSighs.7513:

Can’t have boonshare, can’t have too much invis time on veil, can’t have a high retaliation build, can’t have the ability to make the frontline invulnerable with a well, can’t have any real damage on calamity or gravity well.

Reading this made me realize what a sad waste a lot of mesmer has become… There’s so much potential for powerful unique mechanics, but instead they would rather make mesmer do something as boring as revive and cleanse…

I think he is holding out hope that we will somehow find a way to make mirage work if we have a longer period of time to play it and explore every possibility. It was nice that he at least admitted he was wrong about some things and that we mesmer-mains actually have a point. Maybe next time he will spend an hour or two reading threads. It really seems to me like he heard his circle of friends on discord say offhand “hah dude bro, the mesmer forums are on fire lul” and he just assumed that was an accurate picture of events.

I tried mirage for a few hours. I tried several condi builds using dueling/dom, dueling/chaos, and dueling/inspiration. Nothing worked. I just got completely wrecked when fighting on point, and usually ended up trying to run away with blink and jaunt ineffectively. Fighting a player requires precise positioning, controlled movement (pretend to be a clone), and precise timing to set up a complex stun + burst. It’s a lot of effort for pitifully bad damage that gets ignored by sweeping condi cleanse.

On the flip side I rolled a scourge and basically just drop shades on point and roll my face across the keyboard. Holosmith is the same. Roll face across keyboard, stuff dies. Mirage needs to figure out what the hell it is supposed to be if it wants to see any use in pvp.

Mirage really ought to change shatter skills into empower skills. Make the illusions temporarily stronger instead of killing them off.

That’s if Mirage is supposed to be the “not-shatter” spec. A “not-shatter” spec that still got shatter skills on the bar is going to be a broken mess no matter what you do.

Minipets and weapons are relatively easier to drop into the game. Making new dungeons and maps and stuff is a lot more work because it requires playtesting. There’s a lot of dynamic systems at work and more things can go wrong. I would love to see some new content though, even if its just a simple mini quest with some mad king lore.

Solitaire.3680:

why is it obvious we won’t get a tengu race? maybe they havent figured out the logistics of how it’s going to work and put it off indefinitely.. but this games going to be around for a long time and Tengu seems the likeliest for a new race which I think eventually we will get

I’m still holding out hope for it, especially since they added mounts against everyone’s predictions. If you are interested I am fairly familiar with the logistical and technical issues involved. It’s a LOT of work, but not insurmountable, and it’s definitely a good expansion seller if done right.

Kitty La Boom Boom.4065:

tl:dr version:
New character creation content that includes more afrocentric options is awesome!
So why does it seem that Kormir still looks whitewashed? Can that please be fixed?

I have a better idea:

Make Kormir look exactly the way she has always looked since gw1.

I don’t understand the OP… I don’t see the difference in facial features. The pictures all look the same to me.

Yes please!

The question is do tengu have a full set of animations (run, walk, jump, swing sword, shoot rifle, etc). If not then a combat tonic won’t be possible until an animator spends time making them.

P.S. I could make those animations if anet let me borrow the rig

Most people seem to think that because it’s called a “game engine” that it works just like a “car engine” and therefore you assume that replacing the engine with a brand new more powerful one will just magically fix all the problems.

Unfortunately that analogy doesn’t work. The game engine is more like an environment that you put objects inside of. It would be like trying to fix global warming by replacing the earth’s crust with a new one.

Changing engines is a lot easier said than done, and the same goes for upgrading from dx9. It’s not even clear if upgrading from dx9 will make that big of a difference. Just because dx10 is a bigger number doesn’t mean it will magically fix GW2.

Torolan.5816:

My argument is that Anet made a lot of people swallow the pill of raids, it is only fair if the next pill is something I enjoy and raiders don´t.

Intentionally developing features based on making one group happy and another group angry is not a good way to develop games.

I’m going to play devil’s advocate for a moment. Suppose I wanted Anet to add pay-to-win items in the gem store (legendary weapons for 800 gems each).

I think there would be a lot of people angry with that feature. Well, by your logic all I need to do is point to a popular feature (like gliding), say “I don’t like gliding”, therefore Anet must add my desired feature because other people got their desired feature. If the game were designed this way, everyone would hate it. It would be a messy hodge-podge of disjointed features.

This isn’t even addressing the technical side of the problem. It is simple not feasible. If you have ever broken out of a map, seen the empty void, seen the invisible backside of walls, seen the holes in the ground, and if you have even a layman’s understanding of asset production, you quickly realize why this isn’t going to happen.

maddoctor.2738:

I don’t think flying mounts can work in a game with maps that are surrounded by walls. Flying mounts work on real open maps and the maps in Guild Wars 2 will never become that open. Porting to other maps, map rewards, map-wide metas and so on can never work in a truly open game so don’t expect to ever get real flying mounts in Guild Wars 2.

This is exactly why flying mounts will never happen. Anet isn’t about to completely overhaul the entire open world to get rid of map boundaries. The technical issues are astronomical, and the benefits are negligible.

Even Blizzard said their overhaul of open world during Cataclysm wasn’t worth it. Blizzard… 10 times bigger than Anet.

Torolan.5816:

How has it killed open world in wow?

It made people lazy. And as for map design it pretty much invalidates space and composition. What’s the point of a mountain if you can just fly over it? Might as well put the quest givers in a flat open field. and put them all 5 feet from each other instead of spread out in the world.

Riding around especially Draenor is a chore,

See I was right… it made people lazy.

flying mkes you reach all the good dailies in away you want without the need of memorizing the way on land. I see the convenience of a mobile elevator where you see
a boring shortcut.

More evidence of laziness. You would rather fly straight to the daily quest givers and skip the “boring” environment. Remember what you said about chores? Seems to me you actually prefer boring chores instead of exploring a beautiful world.

And for the most part, GW2 can´t hold a candle to the lore and the accompanying cinematics of Wow, especially in the starter areas.
The death of Kill`Jaeden cinematic > everything GW2 has ever produced

This bit right here is why the phrase “then go back to WoW” exists. Seriously, if you think WoW is so much better, why aren’t you playing that instead?

The most relaxing supportive build a mesmer really has is minstrel chrono (aka memestrel). However it still requires a fair amount of practice to execute your quickness rotation, and the concentration sigil is mega expensive. Also is does no DPS.

I like the idea of adding more control to the mirrors. I think you could simplify your idea by making a new F5 that just shatters mirrors. Treat the mirrors more like the necro Sand Shades. Not exactly the same, but use a limit of 3 and make them provide local area effects like projectile reflection and confusion. When you shatter them you get 1 second of mirage cloak per mirror.

To clarify pressing F5 would only shatter mirrors, not clones. And pressing F1-F4 would not shatter mirrors. Think of the little squares on the scourge and Firebrand UI to indicate how many mirrors you have up.

Knox.8962:

zealex.9410:

Phantasms will generally still do better dmg compaired to clones tho at least power wise.

In all of my testing this weekend, traited Pistol Phantasms were out DPSing axe clones. This was WAY closer than it is for scepter clones, but it was still better to use the phantasms.

That speaks to the severe lack of synergy between Mirage and the rest of the class. Mirage is all about ambushes, but you get better dps from not using them…

On Mirage:

1. Ambush skills should be available from stealth, not just cloak.

2. Mirage mirrors need a lot of work. They don’t last nearly long enough. 15-20 seconds would be better. Also it is frustrating to walk back to a mirror to pick it up, and equally frustrating for random mirrors to spawn on top of you and force you into an ambush animation.

I suggest a new F5 shatter specifically for mirrors (not clones or phantasms) which shatters mirrors to give the same effects on demand. Mirrors would no longer trigger just by walking into them.

3. There NEEDS to be better synergy with shatters and phantasms. I suggest changing Self Deception to: Create a clone for every phantasm you shatter. That would be a start. There needs to be other trait options to make shatters worth using. Mirage relies far too much on purely clone ambushes. Consider giving phantasms ambushes as well.

4. There needs to be more survivability for clones specifically. Possibly a trait giving double mirage cloak to clones (not self).

5. The staff ambush skill needs to be improved. The animation is slow, the projectile is slow, the projectile has very poor tracking. It is completely unreliable in pvp. People can avoid it by just strafing.

6. Infinite Horizon should be baseline. Ambushes are the only real new mechanic of the class and we shouldn’t have to choose a trait just for our main mechanic to work.

7. Some or all Deceptions should offer stealth. Sand Through Glass is useless, but with stealth it would be great. It also doesn’t make sense that thief deceptions are entirely about stealth, but mesmer deceptions work more like thief Tricks…

8. Remove the RNG from Shards of glass. RNG on top of a 20 second cooldown is too much.

Overall Mirage lacks focus. It has no synergy with basic mesmer mechanics (shatters, phantasms). The utilities are objectively worse than core mesmer skills across the board. Mirage offers little or no team support, making it a selfish DPS spec, yet it’s DPS suffers greatly because clones die easily and their ambush skills are clunky and unreliable. Mirrors are completely underwhelming and difficult to use. A significant rework may be necessary.

Yeah this needs to change somehow.

I really couldn’t care less whether mesmer is power or condi, as long as it’s effective.

There needs to be a trait that spawns a clone for every phantasm you shatter. Phantasms and shatters have no synergy with mirage. There needs to be at least something.

Arshay Duskbrow.1306:

Mirage Mirror: The worst of them all. There is no redeeming feature to this awkward and useless mechanic. I cannot even begin to fathom how this mechanic made it so far into development. Needs to be completely removed from the spec altogether.

Someone on the design team saw an animation made by one of the effects artists, and they “just haaaaad to have that in the game” somehow.

I think the mirror mechanic could be a thing… but it will require a lot of huge changes… And I doubt Anet will want to go through the pain of that. They tend to fix mesmer problems with bandaids, even when open heart surgery is required.

Unfortunately you need a lot of individuals repeating the same things for the devs to really take notice. One lone thread with no replies gets burried on page 20 where no one sees it. Remember we are the ones with loads of free time to read and write on the forums. The devs are busy trying to build the game and they literally hire interns and community reps to read this stuff and condense it into bullet points for the devs.

Complaints are a good thing. The devs can’t fix the flaws with the class if you don’t point them out. It’s nice to make the devs feel warm and fuzzy with happy positive vibes, but happy vibes don’t address the flaws.

Carighan.6758:

Mirage feels like it was done by someone who is insanely scared of PvP as a whole.

It feels like anet didnt really do enough informed testing of pvp. By that I mean they didn’t bring in experience pvp players who know the core classes inside and out. Instead it seems like a dev shot at a stationary target golem for a bit, which is how we end up with funky staff ambush that has horrible tracking. Because who needs tracking for a stationary target?

1. Infinite Horizon should be baseline.

2. Self deception should be changed to: Produce a clone for every phantasm you shatter.

3. Shards of Glass should not be RNG. Remove the 33% chance and make it always trigger on a 20 second cooldown.

I want to reinforce what others are saying about cloak. It is frustrating to spend endurance on dps, especially when the ambush skills are so finicky.

There should be more accessible ways to produce ambushes. I suggest allowing us to use ambush skills from stealth in addition to cloak.

Staff ambush is extraordinarily unreliable in pvp because of poor tracking and slow projectile. The orbs will often fly off in random directions completely missing my target by a mile when they are just walking from left to right.

I suggest fixing the tracking and speeding up the projectile slightly.

1. The mirror duration is way too short. It needs to be more like 15-20 seconds to allow the mesmer to choose when they want to back track and walk over to the mirror.

2. The Shards of Glass trait is terrible. RNG on a trait with a 20 second internal cooldown is extremely unreliable and not even remotely worth taking over the other choices. Remove the RNG and keep the 20 second cooldown.

3. The mirrors themselves should do other things with they are on the field. Perhaps a trait to make them reflect projectiles?

Wild suggestion: Rework mirage mirrors into a new F5 skill. Instead of granting mirage cloak when you touch a mirror, make an F5 shatter specifically for mirrors. When you shatter 3 mirrors it gives you and allies 3 seconds of mirage cloak (1 second per mirror) and lets you fire off multiple ambush skills.

4. All the deceptions are underwhelming and mostly not worth taking under any circumstance over other skills. Add stealth to at least some of them. Sand Through Glass would be awesome with stealth. Also it would help if the mirror generation was stronger.

5. Mirage cloak itself is great, but the window of opprotunity to fire an ambush skill needs to be longer. Sometimes I miss it because I was in the middle of another casting animation when I got mirage cloak. Also sometimes clones fail to fire their ambush skill.

6. Some ambush skills (such as staff) are clunky and rarely effective. The staff one has a slow animation, the projectile is slow, and the tracking is slow so it fires orbs in odd directions which usually miss my target by a mile if they are just walking around.

They should add stealth to at least ONE of the deceptions… Sand Through Glass is a good candidate.

Also they should make ambush skills available from stealth, not just mirage mirror.

I’m pretty sure you need to press 1 to make it happen. I wish they would extend the window though, as sometimes it fails to register.

Also I wish they would make ambush skills available from stealth, not just mirage cloak.

Levetty.1279:

Delete Mesmer
Create Guardian
Unlock Firebrand
Select Quickness traits
Equip Spirit weapons

You are now a blue Mesmer with higher damage and support with no broken mechanics.

._______.

It’s true….

1. I think Infinite horizon needs to be baseline (lots of people do).

2. There NEEDS to be a trait that spawns a clone for every phantasm you shatter. This will make phantasms and shatters actually do something for the spec. Currently half the mesmer’s core mechanics are useless to the mirage.

3. Mirage mirrors need a total rework. Make them last longer (15-20 seconds) and instead of granting mirage cloak by touching them, make them a persistent effect on the field similar to a sand shade. (see #4 before you judge) I would even go so far as to let them reflect projectiles if traited.

4. Now add a new F5 skill that shatters mirage mirrors. Shattering the mirrors grants either mirage cloak or stealth (whichever works) to all nearby allies and illusions, and it gains the benefit of the (now baseline) Illusionary Persona. The mirage cloaks from F5 shatter stack duration so you can get up to 2 or 3 seconds of it. The F5 will obviously have a long cooldown, and NO it won’t shatter clones, only mirrors.

5. I think a lot of the ambush skills need to be refined on the technical side. The animations and timing is super clunky.

For example the staff ambush. The cast animation is really slow, the projectile is slow, and it has very poor tracking often sending orbs flying in odd directions well away from my target. The greatsword ambush is just too weak. Sword and scepter are decent but still a little clunky.

6. Jaunt should be 600. Otherwise it’s pretty solid.

7. All the other deceptions are garbage and need a lot of buffs if not a total rework. I would like to see them all get a mirage mirror on cast as baseline. And for heavens sake make ONE of them actually apply stealth. They are DECEPTIONS after all. Sand Through Glass would be excellent if it granted stealth in addition to the mirror changes I outlined.

8. Ambush skills should also become available from stealth, not just mirage cloak.

9. False Oasis is a sad clown meme.

Rauderi.8706:

Xenon.4537:

Kal Spiro.9745:

I was going to say that short of making each of these backpacks a straight BLTC skin they won’t make them gliders too retroactively because it would mean that anyone can buy them without earning them, kittening off those that went to the trouble.

However, that is kind of the case now. It’s just a variable amount of gems to effectively buy each of them as a skin. You still have to build the Spinal Backpack, but you can buy all the parts to do it. So we’re probably getting closer.

I’m talking about making it unlock if you have the skin. Same way the black and white wing gliders unlock. So you can’t get the glider unless you have the jeptack backpiece. That’s about as fair as it can be.

That was a thing they did with the black/white wings after they added gliders.

Yep, and they should theoretically be able to do the same thing here. I think that is the fairest way to let the current (and future) owners of the jetpack have the glider instead of asking for even more gems.