Guild Wars 2

I’m in the process of picking an alt to focus on now, and Rev is one of the frontrunners. My main issue is just how god awful boring the playstyle is for Glint.

Now the obvious reply is, “Well then just don’t play Glint!” and while I would normally agree with you, I feel like I’m gimping myself if I don’t use him. I mainly play all forms of PvE, and you’re almost expected to bring Glint at all times. The boon duration is just too good. Plus, in open world stuff, it’s the only way to acquire perma swiftness, which is a big deal.

But I can’t get over how boring it is. Swap to Glint, turn on all your buffs, and use a few weapon skills. I know I could consume the facets, but it never really seems optimal to do that.

Anyone else feel this way or am I missing something?

Misguided.5139:

Sorry if I came off as feisty. Being told I’m a lousy player (not by you) because I choose to play the profession got my dander up.

Not at all! I was honestly just genuinely curious what you meant there, and now that you explained it a bit more it makes sense

That said, I feel Mesmer is pretty similar in that regard. Spamming wells can be rather straightforward, but I found that the more comfortable you are with the class, the more reactive you can be with your skills/shatters, as opposed to just following a rotation. Let’s me be reactive to the fight and that’s very rewarding for me.

Either way I’m glad you’re liking Rev. I really really want to like it, and I did at first, but I almost feel “forced” to play Herald because the boons are so good (and, frankly, perma-swiftness is amazing in open world). The problem there is that the “pop and let them sit there” style of facets bores me to tears haha

Misguided.5139:

You know what else is boring? Spamming powers on cooldown. If that’s what people want, go play an engineer. Or an Ele. Or a Mesmer.

Care to explain this one? I play both Engineer and Mesmer, and they’re some of the most complex (read: NOT boring) classes in the game. “Spamming powers on cooldown” doesn’t make much sense to me, seeing how every class but thief rotates their skills based on cooldowns, including Rev.

Levetty.1279:

Yeah they definetly look much worse and I have no idea why they changed it.

They just took out some of the extra shiny animations that you’d see on high graphics.

As for why…….ESPROTS!

Seriously though, the idea is to make the skills and such less “noisy” so that it’s easier to follow in spectator mode for PvP.

Thanks for all the advice and ideas, everyone. I think my main problem was that I was too focused on all of the condition damage, which kind of defeated the purpose of a hybrid build. Also, as Phloww pointed out, I didn’t have a way to handle conditions on myself, which was less than ideal.

I’ve reworked it a bit and I’m going to give this version a shot. I wanted to have at least 50% crit chance, while maximizing damage and conditions everywhere else. This is what I ended up with:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhUQNAsaWnsICFphlfC+fCUrhFcjqMAWtXrOWv1cFN3OpdA-TRSFAB9raygKBB4JAQsyP33foe1M89UAghWA00FQKgF1VB-e

In fractals/raids I’ll swap to All’s Well That Ends Well, swap the heal signet and mantra for wells, and swap the Staff out for either a Focus or a Shield, depending on the situation.

The only two things that are less-than-ideal for me are 1) No blink. Man oh man I love me some blink. It’s usually an auto-include for me, but it didn’t fit with this build, and 2) The mantra. It’s boring, but I needed some sort of condi removal, so there it is. I considered using the heal well instead, but then I wouldn’t be able to get out dual iDuelists as quickly.

EDIT: Secondary thought I had. Danger Time seems to have some nice synergy with Well of Action and Time Warp, combined with the bleed on crit sigils, but I don’t really think it’s worth dropping Improved Alacrity for.

So the short version is I got antsy and wanted to mix things up a bit. I really enjoy the shatter condi playstyle, but I wasn’t convniced full condi was the way to go, so I shot for a hybrid condi/dps build.

I actually like it for the most part, but it just feels like it’s missing……something.

Here is the build as it currently stands: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhAQNAseWnsIC9fiVoBmpBEgilZjqMAqtcreX/1hFdJipiA-TRhbABkq+zaK/qc/BK1HAgSQSBso0I-e

When I go into fractals I usually swap the traits/weapons around to do a full well/alacrity stack, but I keep the Viper armor and swap to Zerker weapons/trinkets. I also swap the weapons a lot depending on the situation (For example I swap to Greatsword, Sword/Pistol when I do the south part of the Tarir meta).

Anyway, the point of the build is torment/blind/confusion on every shatter, and I can shatter very often. I also get blind and confusion on blocks/evades, which I get a lot of between shield, sword 2, Shatter 4, and staff Aegis. While the shield is great for skipping mobs in open world, it seems slightly underwhelming there.

What are your thoughts? Has anyone done the math on Viper overall? On that note, is anyone else using Viper, and if so, what build type are you running?

Looking forward to your feedback!

Bump. I’ve encountered both of these bugs. Three-toed-tootsie is impossible right now, even with 10 people spamming CCs as soon as it starts casting

Silent The Gray.3091:

From all of the 10+ precursors i’ve tried going for, I’d easily say half of them are completely bugged out to where you can’t advance tiers in them at all. Mostly due to events being bugged out, not sure how all of the sudden these events no longer function like they used to, but it is irritating.

Yep. I’ve tried two precuror chains so far (Fireseeker Prophecies and The Minstrel) and both of them are bugged. Super frustrating.

I submitted a bug report because the NPC doesn’t sell the item he’s supposed to and the event hasn’t popped once in the 2 hours I’ve sat there.

I was just searching around for this and I can’t find anything on it either. Strange!

Well that’s unfortunate, means i have to rely on others letting the event fail, but that’s good to know, thanks!

Anyone have any insight on the other one?

Hey all,

I’m currently trying to complete the first step of the precursor journey for The Minstrel. So far I’ve had isues with two of these steps that require a certain event to complete in order to acquire the item you need.

The first is in the Devourer’s Mouth in Plains of Ashford. From what I can tell, I’m supposed to talk to the NPC there who will sell me a recipie. He is supposed to be a vendor when the event isn’t happening, but he isn’t selling anything, and I’ve waited over an hour now with no event popping.

The second is in Malchor’s Leap, where you are supposed to complete an event with Giant Chickens. The first step of the chain is this event: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Destroy_the_chicken_coops_and_the_undead_eggs_inside

However, when you complete that event, all that happens is an Inquest appears that you kill. No Giant Chickens.

Am I the only one having trouble with these?

This trait always intrigued me, and I’ve used it in the past, but I’ve continually had one glaring issue. The first part of my rotation is usually to summon phantasms , which means that it casts the signet immediately at the start of the fight when I have barely any buffs (unless we prebuff, which we never really do).

Does anyone use this in a boonsharing build? If so, how do you best utilize it?

tobascodagama.2961:

You clearly haven’t done extensive research into Mesmer healing builds, or you’d know that Restorative Illusions only heals the Mesmer.

I actually realized that right after posting (when I went to see if I could make a decent healing build), but you’re totally right on that point. For what it’s worth, one of the passive traits in that same tree heals others whenever you heal yourself, so I guess it indirectly works, but it still isn’t very good.

But as I said, my overall point was more about the nature of the response more than it’s content.

Fay.2357:

I’ll dare.

Healing mesmer is absolute garbage and if you play it you deserve an instant kick from any party.

Your healing coefficients are awful. Healing requires you to spam mantras continually, which is awful. Even if you absolutely maximize every possible way to heal on a mesmer, you’ll still get outhealed by a druid that isn’t even using healing stats.

Healing mesmer is garbage.

Edit: And our boonshare isn’t even that good. Unless you’re running my particular chrono build, you don’t generate any good might, fury, or aegis, which are the actually important boons to be sharing.

While I normally respect your insights (I haven’t been on the forums much in a long time, but I remember your stuff from the Pyro days), responses like this really bother me.

I won’t pretend like I’ve done extensive research into a Mesmer healing build, but I do notice that you don’t even mention the “heal on shatter” trait. My only point there is (theoretically) you don’t have to spam mantras to heal the party.

That said, I don’t care as much about arguing the build itself. Saying things like “if you play it you deserve an instant kick from any party” is both rude and completely absurd. Who are you to tell people what they can and can’t play? If he has a build that he enjoys and is contributing to the group, what right do you have to tell him he can’t do it?

Maybe if you’re in an elitist “speed run” group I can understand it, but to tell him he should be kicked from any party is just plain ridiculous. That whole mentality is a big issue in this game (although it’s not as rampant as it used to be). The “follow the meta or GTFO” is stupid, because you can easily handle the content in this game without following it.

And “Unless you’re running my particular chorno build”? Come on man, are you really arrogant enough to think that your build is the only viable one?

Like I said, I usually respect your opinions and I appreciate everything you contribte to the Mesmer community, but I just don’t see why you feel the need to say stuff like that.

/end rant

IGN – Willowbreeze
Server – Tarnished Coast
Playstyle – All the Things!
Role – Scholar/Tester
Timezone: CST

Now that I can chat in multiple guilds at once, I can finally join!

I love this trait, and was using it for a while in my dungeon/fractal build. It’s great team support and provides quite a bit of boon share/sustain.

But I had to swap it out because it would screw up my rotation every time. So, as you all know, you typically summon phantasm > signet heal > summon another phantasm.

Well with this trait, you summon your first phantasm and the trait activates Signet of Inspiration. But here’s the thing, it actually behaves as if you’re casting the signet! So I would often try to cast my second phantasm, fail, and weapon swap expecting that phantasm to already be up. Even when I got used to it, my rotation was slowed too much to make it worth it so I swapped it out.

Anyone else find it silly that it blocks you from casting other spells because you’re locked into the animation for “casting” Signet of Inspiration with this trait? I think it would be much better if that were removed, but I’d like to hear your thoughts.

I’ve done this boss countless times on much higher levels than 10, and I’ve never had this issue before. I mean, I get the mechanics, dodging the AR attack, etc, but it’s never hit this hard, even on higher levels. Just seems off to me.

People with lower AR shouldn’t be one-shotted in that low of a level.

So I was running a level 10 fractal today for the daily and I noticed a few things that seem WAY off that I wanted to bring up here to see if anyone else was experiencing the same thing.

The first thing I noticed was in the Ice Elemental fractal when the final boss would seem to be hitting us with his main attack twice in a row, insta-downing us.

But by far the most noticable was in the Dredge fractal. Need I remind you, this is a Level 10. Every 30 seconds or so the final boss is doing an AoE attack that is instantly applying 3 stacks of Agony that is taking 60-70% of my health, and I have 30 AR.

Two other people in my party have 50 and 70 AR respectively, and it’s also doing massive damage to them. What the heck is going on??

xaunpy.9081:

HOrrik’s Cannon! They won’t even have to do much work!
pls Arenanet.

Now I want to create a macro that yells, “Horrik! Unleash the Cannons!” every time I equip the Mortar Kit.

Fay.2357:

Quick test in PvP shows that ineptitude does at least nominally function with blurred frenzy.

Awesome, thanks Pyro. Could be that it has a cap on the number of players it can effect. I’ll have to test some more to find out.

I was testing out a zerg condi build in a raid last night and although the trait description is pretty clear, I’m not sure if this is working.

The idea was to hop into a zerg or a bunch of red circles, hit sword two to evade everything, and therefore blind/confuse a huge group. I would often jump in and do just that, but I didn’t see very many purple tooltips telling me I was dealing condi damage to everyone. Do the sword evades not count for this trait? Has anyone playtested this?

I’m considering swapping the Sword/Torch for Greatsword anyway so I can take advantage of the interrupt for Mistrust and my Perplexity runes, but I wanted to check on this first.

It seems like a very fun concept to me, but if it is bugged I don’t want to waste my time.

A few weeks ago I did Against the Corruption. Then the patch hit, and I’m trying to finish everything up. I was doing the level 80 quests (capturing the ship, attacking the Cursed Shore, etc) and now I have to do Against the Corruption again?!

It even says it’s a level 70 quest, which went back 10 levels. Is something bugged in my story or is this just how they “fixed” it?

Man, people will complain about ANYTHING. I did this entire thing without the Dulfy guide and had zero issues. And, I might add, it was a blast! But then again gamers these days just want to have everything handed to them instead of being challenged and having to work for it.

I love this kind of thing and hope to see more stuff like it, well done Anet!

I would like to take a moment to applaud the participants of this thread so far for not giving up and just bashing the OP. Cleary explained and well thought out explanations time and time again, and yet he just won’t get it. Not to mention the constant condescending responses and clear lack of smiley faces.

10/10 would laugh again.

Why wouldn’t the runes be allowed in WvW? I use them all the time.

But either way, that’s why the topic specifies this build is for PvE

Been a Mesmer from day one, and my favorite playstyles are shatter and condi. With the patch, that might actually be viable for PvE, yay!

So I put together this build for dungeons, and I’d love to hear your thoughts. Keep in mind that I already have Rabid gear with perplexity runes, which is why I went that route, but I might work on making a Sinister set so I can maximize the DPS there.

Here’s a link to the build.

Quick overview:

• Tons of Vulnerability stacking, which should help personal as well as group DPS.
• Each shatter does: Vulnerability, Confusion (multiple times), Torment, Blind, in addition to their normal effects.
• Tons of blinds for damage mitigation, which also adds more confusion.

It ends up (at least in theory) being a nice combo of group utility and condi DPS. What do you guys think?

EnergySlam.2793:

He’s saying that his friends already own the base game and have tried gw2 before.
$50 for an expansion with barely any content revealed as of now is a very steep price to pay. Where are the new dungeons, fractals or challenging content ? How convenient of them to be selling the game before announcing any of that.

Ahhh my bad, I misread that.

Zin.6170:

It isn’t that I won’t purchase it, but my friends I almost persuaded to come try the game again will not be purchasing it now.

Their response to me telling the cost, “lol”

Wait, so your friends lol’d at a full fledged MMO with the expansion included costing $50 with no subscription fees?

Good luck getting those friends to play anything haha

Are they going to post the rest of the profession stuff somewhere?

MSFone.3026:

not to mention imo DE is still totally mandatory.

I would have agreed in the past, but I think there’s some merit to replacing DE with Illusionary Reversion. Gaining a clone each time you shatter is huge, and it gives us the ability to gain 4 free clones instead of 2 (albeit on a somewhat longer cooldown depending on the shatter).

Plus, you don’t have to waste your dodges on generating clones, and Time Splitter can give you up to 8 free clones in theory.

It will require playtesting, but I’m not convinced DE is mandatory anymore.

Come join us as we farm all the world bosses tonight! Fun times guaranteed or your money back!

SteveK.5827:

After download just login then play ! Why logout and restart ?

I’m pretty sure you’re trolling, but just in case…I just used logging out and back in as an example of how I have to redownload the update every time, even if it’s right away.

I tried repairing and it didn’t fix it. The only thing I can think of us that I’m using a .bat file to launch the game. I do this because I have 2 accounts and it saves the login information for me.

If I launch the game normally it seems to skip the downlad, but when I go through the .bat file it starts over.

Here’s my .bat file:
@echo off
copy /Y /V Local_2.dat Local.dat
start "" “[PathToGame]”

I just took out the path to the game to paste here, but you get the idea. Any thoughts?

Not quite what I meant.

So to explain it further here’s exactly what’s happening to me:

1) I open the game, it downloads the update.
2) I log in, and log back out.
3) I close the game.
4) I open the game again, and it downloads the same update that it downloaded last time.

It does this every time I open it, regardless of when.

Maybe this is just me, but the past few days, my client is making me download something every time I log into the game. I could literally log in, exit the game, open it right back up again, and it starts the download over.

Anyone else having this issue?

I like looking at traits that aren’t that popular and seeing if I can make them work in a build.

Currently I’m working on my commanding, as mentioned in my previous thread, so I wanted to put together a retaliation build that could maximize tags, and therefore hopefully rallies. Retal with the defender means lots and lots of tags indeed.

Here’s what I came up with: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fhUQNArdWlknpRtFrxSNcrRiuhYaJacySjQ1wSFA-T1xHwACOFA+U+9Qfwp9H8o+TclgAeCAkCgJlWA-w

That last open spot I COULD fit retalitory demise, wich in theory could help me rally on someone that is attacking me while I’m downed. Now I’m not sure this will happen much in a zerg, so it might not make any sense but I’d love to hear your thoughts on it. Maybe I should just rework things a bit and grab feedback to get more tags that way.

Well I just tried this build for my first time ever commanding anything in EotM and I’m pretty happy with how it turned out overall. Although the Decent into Madness trait was helpful in EotM I agree that it might not be needed in other maps.

The problem is EotM didn’t really give me a good sampling of what it would be like running a semi-organized zerg who stacks/pushes together, since EotM players tend to be more PvE oriented.

That said it was pretty easy to stay alive, and between focus and my group swiftness I was able to stay ahead of the group fairly easily.

Now my actual commanding? That’s another story

Oh my, I may have posted this a bit too soon. I just discovered the NVIDIA control panel, which had an option to choose it has the preferred graphics card. HOW HAVE I NOT FOUND THIS BEFORE, I’VE HAD THIS COMPUTER FOR A YEAR!

In my quick test run, I’m now getting 75-90 FPS in WvW, when I was getting 13-15 before (out of combat). Only downside is it gets hella loud with the fan, but worth it!

I bought a gaming laptop from MSI. Here’s the full description to be exact:

MSI GT Series GT70 Dominator-895 Gaming Laptop Intel Core i7 4800MQ (2.70GHz) 8GB Memory 1TB HDD NVIDIA GeForce GTX 870M 3GB 17.3" Windows 8.1 64-Bit

However, I still get very poor FPS in WvW (15 or so solo and much less than that in large fights). World bosses are even worse.

Oddly enough, despite that description, when I check the Properties window in my PC it says my processor speed is 2.8GHz, but the GPU shows as just “Intel HD Graphics 4600”.

Forgive me if this is a stupid question, but is it possible that my laptop is defaulting to using some sort of integreated graphics card and not the NVIDIA GeForce one that it supposedly came with? Maybe that could explain the performance issue.

If that’s not the case, any other suggestions as to what might be causing it?

Thanks in advance!

All great points. For the mantras, I was under the impression that the healing came into effect when I used the charges as well, so that’s disappointing.

I’ll probably play around a bit more, but your point about blinking is a good one, and leads me to think I shouldn’t be using Staff either in that case, since the 2 skill blinks me back. Plus, Chaos Storm, while totally awesome, breaks stealth rather easily.

I recently got my tag, and I’m going to be following around some good commanders to learn as much as I can. In the meantime, I’m working on the build I’m going to use with the goal to:

1) Stay alive
2) Provide as much utility as I can

What do you guys think of this:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fhAQNAsdWl0npKtFrxMNcrNytRY6sxpTvO/WqAA-T1xHABKfKAeQfwJ7P4h6P/o8rJlgA8EAIFwSKtA-w

Full soldiers, and mantras that heal/remove condis, as well as condi clear on weapon swap. I also often get Protection and other boons when I stealth, and also give an extra second of stealth with my Veil.

I’m not sure if torch would be better for the stealth or if I should use focus for the pull/swiftness to stay out front.

What do you guys think?

Azhure.1857:

You could transfer to a less populated server instead of wishing that the FULL status on your server be temporarily pushed aside so your friends can get in.

Unfortunately that isn’t an option, since a bunch of my other friends that already play the game are on TC.

I didn’t know about the no character = free transfer thing though!

So with the GW2 sale last weekend I convinced two of my friends to give the game a shot. I purchased 2 new accounts and set everything up for them, but when I went to create a character on my server so that they could play with me, it was full (I’m on Tarnished Coast).

Actually, in my haste to get started, I created a character on another server on one account, only then remembering it would cost him $20 to transfer. So I didn’t do anything on that character and emailed support asking if they could transfer it since it was a brand new account. That was a week ago, but I haven’t heard anything back yet.

I remember reading somewhere that servers open up from time to time for transfers, but I’ve been checking once or twice a day for the whole week and it’s always full.

Am I destined to never play WvW with my friends, or is there a way to get them on my server?

Finally got the look I want! New to engi, but they sure are fun to skin.

Thanks for the detailed reply Elegy!

I think my biggest issue was I was in the mindset of, “OK I got a character to 80, time to grind some stuff and gear him out!” which we all know doesn’t make sense in this game.

So instead, I’ve just been doing what I normally did on my main, but using my engineer more often. I’ve been running the “standard” grenadier build and having a lot of fun with it in PvE. It’ll take me a while to master everything, but I’m enjoying learning it for sure.

Now the problem is balancing the stuff I want to do on him with the things I want to do on my main. That’s a problem I don’t mind having haha

Thanks again guys.

I played it from 1-10, boosted to 20, then played it from 20 to about 65, but admittedly it was a lot of EotM

To everyone else, thanks for the advice! Been playing him more the last few days and liking it a lot.

Hey there everyone. My name is Zumi and I main a Mesmer. I’ve been playing this game for a long time now, and aside from my Guardian that I leveled when the game first launched, I’ve spent 99.99% of my time playing nothing but my Mesmer.

With that said, I’ve had an itch for a long time to level an alt and mix things up a bit, and as of a few days ago, I FINALLY got around to it and I now have a level 80 Engineer! So, as someone who has been playing one class forever and never really played with an alt, here are my questions:

1. Holy cow this profession is confusing. I know the Mesmer like the back of my hand, but I feel like I’m trying to read a new language when I play this guy. Any advice on builds/activities to ease myself in so I can figure out what playstyle I like on the engineer?
2. What gear would you recommend for a new engi like myself? I bought a full rare set of Berserker and crafted a few exotics, but I’m thinking about making a set of Celestial, since Engi’s seem to benefit from every stat. Thoughts?
3. Bomb Kit – Everyone raves about this kit, but it seems so darn clunky to me. The long delay between skill use and it’s effect is annoying, and seems like it would make it useless in PvP/WvW (although I guess I could be convinced to use it in PvE).
4. Flamethrower – Now this seems like a fun kit. Is a juggernaut/flamethrower build viable in PvE?
5. For those of you with alts, what do you usually do once they hit 80? Just get them full exotic and then….do whatever you normally do on your main? It feels like a silly question, but I hit 80 on him the other day and thought to myself, “Sweet! Now what?”

I’ve never bothered to use the “About Face” keybinding until now, but I want to start using it for things like leaping forward on my Mesmer and Engineer.

So, I bound it to a key this morning and I’m trying to use it, but I’m getting extremely inconsistent results. I expirmented for 15-20 minutes but I wasn’t able to nail down a patter for what makes it work or not.

If I’m moving forward, and holding down either mouse button (right button to change direction, left button to move the camera) the About Face button does nothing. Sometimes if I go straight forward without touching the camera it will work, other times it wont. Other times I will push it, it will turn me around, and then it won’t let me do it again.

Is there a trick to this or am I doing something wrong?

D’awww that’s extremely disappointing to find out that Triumphant Distortion doesn’t work with Masterful Reflection. It’s worded to make it sound like it does. I guess I’ll have to move those two points, thanks for the heads up there.

You’re right about the heal, I’ll likely swap it. I used Ether Feast a lot before, so I might just resort to that.

Thanks for the feedback!

Hey guys,

I used to be a huge Mesmer forum junkie back in the day, but I took a pretty extensive break from the game, and just recently got back into it this past December.

I spent a ton of time in WvW when I played previously on a pretty small server with a guild that focused on small 3-7 man groups. Since then I’ve transferred servers to play with friends and the server I’m on now is much more populated, so solo roaming isn’t quite as effective anymore.

Anyway, I’m starting to get into organized large group stuff with my guild, and I wanted to get some build critique from my more experienced zerging Mesmer brethren.

Here’s the build.

The utility skills are interchangable depending on the situation, but the idea is TD should keep me alive with so many people dying in big zergs, and then that distortion becomes reflection, which should apply even more pressure. That combined with the Warden/Curtain should make projectiles a non issue for me, and I should still bring a pretty decent amount of damage.

I have mostly Knights with a couple of random Valkyrie pieces thrown in to add some health. I think it gives me a good mix of damage and survivability in large groups like this. My runes are Melandru, and I haven’t totally decided on sigils yet.

So my questions are:

1. What do you think? Would you change anything? And,
2. What sigils would you suggest for a build like this?

Thanks guys!