Guild Wars 2

Caedmon.6798:

Why dont you guys start with asking what kind of gpu he has….

I did, please read what I posted.

For that price a Radeon 7850 is perfect, it’s a great mid-priced sleeper card. Get the 2GB version and I know Sapphire and XFX make ones that are factory overclocked by a little bit.

I wouldn’t hold my breath for easily attainable permanent bells, if anything they might cave and add them to the gem store for a premium or make them a difficult crafting recipe that will probably end up costing 50g on the trading post. But the fact is people seem to really want more access to the bell, which means a money making opportunity for Anet.

And if they do make it available year-round by any means, they will NEED to add an option to mute it because not everyone wants to listen to people spamming annoying high pitched notes like jerks in Lion’s Arch, which is most likely what it will be used for a lot more than people who want to play actual songs.

This is called “artifacting” and is coming from your video card. It can have many causes. What video card do you have, how much memory does it have and what are the core and memory clock speeds? Are you overclocking it all? Which drivers are you using? And does your case have adequate cooling?

This can be caused by overheating, a bad overclock, your GPU not getting enough power (which may indicate a power supply failure), bad drivers…the list goes on. Your card might also just be on its last legs, this could be a warning sign of imminent GPU failure.

OP is right this works ridiculously easy, just did it with a group, I started building everything and reminded them a few times in chat to build nothing but snowmen and catapaults everywhere and upgrade them when possible and use candy cane 3 on Toxx to knock her back. Everyone picked up on it after the first round and by round 4 we had the place freaking littered in catapaults and snowmen, waves were dying almost instantly as they spawned from all the catapault spam.

The catapaults have ridiculous range and AoE radius, once you have a field of them the waves are a joke and no threat, which is why OP says walls are pointless. If you set this up from the get-go nothing will even get close to the dolyaks.

Defensive time warp is highly underrated, you will become very loved in PvP if you use it for reviving people in clutch situations.

Time Warp, Chaos Storm on your ally for the aegis, get him up almost instantly while taking no damage.

And since I mentioned that, defensive Chaos Storm in itself is highly underrated, all Mesmers need to realize how strong it is for the aegis. It is not just a single aegis, it can block multiple attacks for its duration, it is basically invulnerability (unless this changed recently, I haven’t been on for a week or so).

I use a 12 dollar Wal-Mart keyboard and a seven year old MX518 that looks like it was found in a dumpster at this point. Utilities are bound to E, R and C. Elite is X. Everything else is default.

If I can get by like that, you don’t need all that fanciness and convoluted keybinds.

Asthenea.1546:

I pretty much like all of them, but I feel like there has to be a set that sticks out as the most viable. I’m doing some research though, thanks for the replies

MrPrometheus’s “Comprehensive Mesmer Guide”. It was already linked in an above post. Watch all 4 videos (he said there would be a 5th, but he hasn’t uploaded it yet it’s been a long time, might never get it) and you will get a very solid Mesmer build for leveling as well as learn A TON about the class in general.

It may take a while to watch all the videos, but it is well worth it if you plan to stick with this class.

lisamee.2408:

I would especially love to see a modern version of Ultima Online.

It came out in 2009, it was called Darkfall. They’re shutting down the servers permanently though and have developed a new game in the series called Darkfall: Unholy Wars which comes out soon.

If you ever played UO, you should support Darkfall, it will be right up your alley. Just don’t expect Trammel.

Ultima Online was the only MMO I played for a long time and never really got tired of, but I ended up leaving for good as the game’s population dwindled and those that did stay just sat in Trammel all day, so anyone who wanted to experience the risky side of the game was kind of left in the dust as Felucca became a ghost town.

I enjoyed Dark Age of Camelot until it became a dungeon raiding EQ clone, which was not long after release.

I enjoyed WoW for the above reason, the early days had so much world PvP, no stupid incentives because the honor system did not exist yet, people PvPed to kill the other faction, they camped dungeon entrances, killed quest NPCs and forced battles to happen. This all got incredibly boring once the honor system first came out because people stopped PvPing for the fun of it and got on a treadmill, then came battlegrounds which were just designed to make those players want to play there to maximize their honor grind.

I quit WoW and waited for Age of Conan and Warhammer Online. Both were quite enjoyable, AoC moreso, but the population dropped steadily and, like UO, the gameplay I desired basically died.

That brings me to 2009 and Darkfall, a game I’d been waiting for since about 2004. Amazing game, made me feel like it was a 3D Ultima Online. Played that for years and then a lot of my guild left, some out of boredom, some wanted to play other upcoming games. I stuck with Darkfall by myself for a while and then started playing FPS again while waiting for GW2 (oh and when Mortal came out in 2010 I played it for all of 5 minutes before realizing it was horrible).

So I guess that brings me to GW2, which I had fun taking a few classes to 80 for a while and playing WvW and S/T PvP, but this game feels more and more grindy and the PvP continues to show imbalances, gear dependance and little raw skill. I like that it has no monthly fee and will always be able to log on at my leisure, but right, Darkfall Unholy Wars is coming out in 2 days and I will leave GW2 behind in search of the true MMORPG experience I had so many years ago in Ultima Online.

So, what keeps me interested in a game? The PvP, but not just any PvP, the open world, high risk PvP. The type of game that makes me feel like I’m in a dynamic, unpredictable world, instead of feeling like I am just progressing blandly through each zone and having my hand held.

If Unholy Wars doesn’t work out for me for some reason, CCP’s World of Darkness may hold my interests in the future or maybe I’ll come back to GW2, I don’t know. I feel we need to get the “RPG” back into MMORPG, the “RPG” which denotes the world is player driven and risky and unpredictable, one that does not feel like a job, but an adventure.

Phule.1968:

What about just having fun? It’s just numbers on a screen anyways

Fun died when games started introducing permanently tracked stats for meaningless pub games. I mostly blame the Call of Duty series, since there used to be a time when you could play shooters and have fun instead of feeling forced to play seriously all the time because people would just go reference your stats during any discussion to see if you were “worth” talking to or not. If my stats had been tracked from the old days of Counter-Strike, they’d be awful thanks to how much I would run around doing knife only or have fun spraying the Para like an idiot while micspamming Highway to the Dangerzone.

At this point, the younger generation of gamers cares entirely too much about the numbers and progression. It’s really the most meaningless in GW2 WvW, it’s pretty much entirely about zerging around and right now SoS has probably the biggest Oceanic population, so they keep their numbers high around the clock after the North American players are mostly sleeping.

BAEK.8561:

So let’s say some highschool basketball team plays a game against an NBA team. The highschool team lost the game, but the score was 89-87. Because of the point margin, shouldn’t the highschool team (even though they lost) gain a boost to their rating IF there some sort of rating system for basketball? Same logic.

Just because you finished 3rds doesn’t mean you MUST lose rating.

The NHL has a realistic example, in the NHL if you go into overtime, both teams get a ranking point, so even if Team A wins, Team B still gets something important out of it. Team A winning will get the 2 points they would have gotten if they won in regulation time, but Team B is rewarded for going into overtime with the team that beat them.

Tulisin.6945:

You don’t see numbers pop up when hitting a stealthed enemy, but you do see combat log, hit procs, and auto chains. Good players know when they’re hitting enemies in stealth, and I get the majority of my thief kills by downing them while they’re stealthed. If you’re more mobile than the thief is, killing them during stealth is not that difficult. If you’re less mobile, you wouldn’t be able to catch them stealth or not. Mobility is the culprit here, not stealth.

Heartseeker is not a very effective method of bursting someone down, but it is an effective finisher after opening with something else.

And glass cannon thieves do die quickly to anyone that can match their mobility. A full-on assassin-type thief that stacks offense for a quick kill will literally die in 2/3 auto attack chains. As for Dagger Storm hard-countering your glass warrior, that is exactly what reflect does to projectile type attacks, just switch to melee and smash them while they’re spinning around. Dagger Storming thieves are especially vulnerable if anyone actually takes the time to melee them, I usually consider it a free kill unless they’re good enough to cancel it when someone closes with them.

What kind of Thief gets hit while stealthed? Even in short term stealth, I can completely avoid taking damage on my Thief, you just need to do the least obvious movement pattern.

Heck, when I play my Mesmer, I can avoid damage on my paltry short stealth abilities as well. If anyone is getting hit for a lot of damage while stealthed, they’re not really experienced yet with stealth strategy.

Again, the big problem stems from the constant stealth chaining by Thieves or the constant popping in and out of combat to use backstab over and over. You can effectively play the class without doing these things, that means it is something the class doesn’t actually need, but it is a crutch. For new or inexperienced players a crutch can be good, but for veteran Thieves, it just makes the class have way too much utility. The issue is, also, I feel anyone can become a “veteran” Thief in about 1 hour of practice, it is a pretty simplistic class.

I say these things for the sake of game balance, not because I die to Thieves too often or anything. As I say, I have an 80 Thief, as well as an 80 Guardian and 80 Mesmer and I’ve played with all the other classes for a good amount of time in S/T PvP. The easiest thing to play out of all my experience is a Thief, it also happens to be incredibly powerful with little tradeoff for time investment in learning the class.

But since the Thief is already designed the way it is, I am not suggesting outright nerfs or removal of abilities, I am suggesting giving some other classes more ways to deal with stealth. Things a Thief could handle and adapt to, but also things which would give some classes the ability to counter stealth once in a while or slow down the stealth popping in and out with high damage backstab openers. It would better balance the game overall while not drastically affecting the Thief class. In my previous suggestion with giving Ranger, Guardian and Mesmer such abilities, it would give more benefit to the Ranger and Mesmer, which are both underplayed classes, and it would give Guardian more group support to help others deal with Thieves.

I would suggest Ranger get a flare type ability similar to what WoW had, which would allow them to target specific areas at their choosing. Guardian should get a pulsing close range stealth reveal which would cause Thieves to want to avoid being close to the Guardian. Mesmer would get a “Twilight Vision” or something which could be cast in a target area to give anyone without the circle the ability to see stealthed people, but if you step out of the circle, the buff is removed, to balance it, it would be a fairly long cooldown, maybe even an elite, and last about 5 seconds.

Can you say with honesty you feel any of these suggestions would truly make the Thief too weak? I feel they would just give people some options to deal with it while not making the Thief any weaker per se, but requiring more thought for the Thief.

Tulisin.6945:

I keep getting the impression that much of the community believes thieves get long term stealth. Barring culling issues, most thief stealth lasts 3 seconds, 4 if they’re traited for it (which heavy offense bursty thieves are not). That isn’t “long term stealth” by any standard set by any other game. Even in GW2’s generally more fast-paced combat, that isn’t long-term. The only ways to achieve longer stealth are chaining together abilities (in which case they’re burning their heal + multiple utilities to “escape”) or Shadow Refuge (in which case you let them stand around in a giant obvious circle getting that stealth). What most often happens when people accuse thieves of stealthing for a huge amount of time is that the thief is actually using a 3~ second stealth, breaking contact completely and moving out of sight/range, then returning later on.

As for Heartseeker, what you’re seeing with those high damage hits is usually a combination of a couple traits that make thieves much more effective vs. low-health enemies, along with Heartseeker’s innate executioner-type damage. Heartseeker does 50 % more than “base” damage vs. targets at <50 % HP, and double vs. targets at <25 % HP. Furthermore, popular thief traits give Fury (20 % extra crit chance) and 20 % extra damage vs. targets below 50 % HP. This makes Heartseeker especially potent against low base HP professions (assuming OP was playing the elementalist in their signature), because it only takes a few hits to bring them to <50 % HP. Heartseeker is an excellent example of one of the only abilities in the game that is actually countered better by Vitality/Healing than it is by Toughness. The key to combating Heartseeker (and associated low-HP traits) is to keep it relatively impotent by fighting at >50 % HP. When fighting a target they can’t quickly reduce to low HP a thief that is so invested in executioner-style damage is wasting a lot of trait power.

By long term, I mean chaining all of their stealth abilities. It can also apply to the fact they can pop in and out by spreading them out slightly. What it does is allow Thieves to use a high damage opener multiple times while you’re stuck being unable to really do anything to them because you lose the target.

Since you can’t knock a Thief out of stealth by damaging them or by any other means, it gives them a huge advantage over anyone except for another Thief.

Also, about Shadow Refuge, one class can not really do enough AoE damage to bother a Thief who is in it, as you recall, Shadow Refuge will also heal the Thief, which negates the damage one or two people are doing to them. Not entirely, but it weakens it by a lot. Couple it with the fact once they’re in SR for 8 seconds, they can leave it and gain the remaining 4 seconds of stealth outside of the circle.

I have used AoE knockback abilities on SR and it rarely, if ever, knocks the Thief out of the circle, it usually misses entirely. There is also the fact a lot of AoEs do not have as large of a radius as SR has, meaning a Thief can walk out of your AoE and simply stay in SR unharmed.

You’re right, they don’t have permanent stealth like in WoW or some other games, but that’s not really the point. I would say Thieves in GW2 are actually better stealthers than in any other game I’ve ever played, because stealth can not be broken by anyone and they can use it over and over in-combat. In other games it provided a recon ability and once you were in combat, you really couldn’t re-stealth except for a few, long cooldown special abilities.

I think a few classes could do with some ability to remove stealth from a Thief. Remember how Hunters could cast flare in WoW? It didn’t even always force a Rogue out of stealth in that game, a Rogue could avoid it, but it also allowed people to sit within the flare to gain some protection for a while. Something as simple as that would benefit GW2 greatly. I say give it to Rangers, Guardians and Mesmers, because it fits those classes the best. Rangers are outdoorsmen and survivalists, Guardians are stalwart fighters based on defensive abilities and “light” type magic, and Mesmers are masters of illusion (which ironically Thieves still do better) so would have magic capable of dealing with lightness/darkness.

I know Thieves do not have ultra long term stealth, but I’ve played my Thief enough to see the class is entirely based around crutches, my Thief is level 80 with moderate gear and I still have the easiest time in the world in WvW. In S/T PvP anyone can roll one, look up a build and practice for 5 minutes and top scoreboards. The class has too much going for it.

Bunzy.8674:

My thread is about heartseeker not about any other thief related problem you might have. please keep on topic.

I did stay on topic, I told you Heartseeker and Thief damage in general is fine, that is my view. Heartseeker barely does anything more than auto attack damage when someone has adequate HP, it is simply a waste of initiative then. It is effective to finish low HP enemies, that is the intention. If a Thief is spamming Heartseeker on you, it means they’re not using more effective abilities.

I’m pretty sure they make you immune to everything. I’ve never recalled having anything affect me while under the effects of distortion or blurred frenzy.

I will get a friend to try this on his Mesmer with me though so I can be 100% sure.

Dude, I have my reasons to dislike Thieves in their current incarnation, as do a lot of people, but Heartseeker is not part of the problem.

Multiple chances to stealth, heal and reset the fight or simply run away so easily are why Thieves are problematic. Their damage is actually fine. The problem is having built-in failsafes to the Thief class which allow them to compensate for poor playing ability, it’s genuinely unfair to survive their initial burst from stealth, beat them in the aftermath and then have them just disappear for a ridiculous amount of time while they heal up and then get to attack you again. When you look at the total package of the Thief, they actually have the best survivability in the game, best single target burst damage, best single target CC and best/most escape abilities (Ele escape is close but it doesn’t involve them going completely invisible, so at least you get to see where they are running). I used to play a Guardian in many different builds and after playing a Thief for a while, I can say I feel safer on my glass cannon Thief than I ever did on my bunker Guardian.

Also try not to do what so many people do which is blame a Thief for jumping them in the middle of a fight with a backstab combo. It didn’t matter that it was a Thief, it mattered that you got jumped in the middle of a fight, any class jumping into your 1v1 would have killed you. The constant crutch of fight resets are what make Thieves stupidly unfair, because it is entirely possible for a Thief to do their job out of initial stealth, they don’t actually need as much invisibility as they have access to. This makes Thief players, whether they’re skilled or not, way too aggressive and gutsy, the supposedly squishy assassin class shouldn’t be brazenly attacking someone in a group, groups should deter them. But as it stands, you will commonly see a Thief try to jump another squishy even if they’re rolling with a few of their guild mates, because the Thief knows if it fails, he can just leave. Since there is no risk involved in these ambushes, it means the balance is off, the Thief class should be entirely about risk vs reward.

Stealth in general is a bad mechanic in MMOs. In every MMO I’ve played that involved any amount of long term stealth abilities, the classes that had them were always either overpowered or underpowered, it is incredibly hard to balance classes around this mechanic. Anet chose to stick with this cookie cutter assassin mechanic and now GW2 is yet another game where the Thief/Rogue/Assassin/whatever class will probably never see proper balance.

TheGuy.3568:

Hard to play? With practice not really.

Harder than other classes? Yes by far.

pricer.5091:

Elementalist so far for me is the most frustrating class, I cannot even contemplate taking on the numbers of mobs I can take on my thief or warrior. The damage sucks and they have very poor survivabiity…unless of course you nerf your damage into the ground, and even then they’re not great.

Ha ha ha. That was good for a laugh any D/D ele in the standard build can survive better than just about any other class. The most mobs I have fought at once is 10. The most vets 4 taking supply camps solo. Its not that tricky.

Properly played in PvE, a Mesmer can do the exact same thing, if not more mobs. It is possible to be completely untouched in PvE as a Mesmer if you know what you’re doing. Different builds are required for different mob situations though, you can not use the same build you use for melee enemies against things that just keep you targeted with ranged, in that regard the Ele is maybe better if you can do it all in one build.

That said, my view of PvP is that every class is both easy and difficult. What I mean is that anyone can learn good 1v1 tactics for their class and stick to them, true skill comes into play when things go awry and you have to improvise. So, in that regard, if you can improvise difficult fights with whatever class you enjoy, you are good. Some classes that come off as easy for 1v1 have a much more difficult time dealing with different scenarios, whereas some classes are not great in duels, but can handle multiple threats better.

My point is, pinpoint what any given class struggles with and work on getting better in those scenarios, that is how you truly become good at a class. Just like in real life, maybe a sports team dominates another team using a certain type of playbook, but then they struggle with a seemingly weaker team’s scheme. You have to get better at your weaknesses.

I do not believe Ele is more difficult or more skill-based just because of attunement swapping. Heck, WoW was not a complex game, but any class you play there is managing more skills than anything in GW2. The number of buttons you potentially have to press has little bearing on things at the end of the day. Because then you could just say playing the piano takes more talent and skill than being a drummer, for example, or the drummer could say “well I have to keep time with my band and I have to manage the sticks, so drumming takes more skill!”, but neither is actually true.

Eles are currently good in one or two builds, but I know the class needs some stuff fixed. A lot of classes need their bunker builds toned down and at the same time need other builds to be made more viable.

Bunkers should be defensive, but not capable of holding a node for such a long time against things like 1v3 odds while they simply call for backup. Ele, Guardian and Necro bunkers should not be this strong, but many players feel forced into the role because they can’t find enough to do outside of those builds. When it’s gotten to the point that most players don’t bother fighting Eles because they already know there is a 95% chance it’s a D/D bunker that they can’t kill 1v1, something is wrong.

As a Mesmer, I just ignore you guys, it is a cold day in hell when I can actually kill a bunker Ele by myself. But you don’t do enough damage to even really bug me while I run away and if I stay and fight it will last probably a good 5 minutes, so what’s the point? The problem that arises with this is that people running bunker builds can guarantee themselves a a captured or contested node, either people say “This is pointless, I should just go to another fight” or they sit there fighting a brick wall for nothing.

This isn’t to say bunkers are overpowered , per se. But 3 bunker teams are becoming the norm in tournaments and that indicates something is off with the game’s balance. Anytime anything is “the norm” in a game like this, the balance needs to be looked at.

Aervius.2016:

snip

You’ve completely misunderstood what I was saying and I’m not going to act like your mother and hold your hand through it if you’re unable to use reading comprehension and lack the ability to translate all those abilities you’ve listed into how they actually function in real combat compared to the fact thieves have way too many stealth options. It’s especially hilarious when you pull the old “I stopped reading!” crap, conveniently allowing you to respond while never actually getting the point of the post.

I also never said a single thing about taking stealth away from a thief entirely, I said it would be nice to have had a class designed to be effective without it, which you, in turn, emotionally kneejerked into me somehow saying “Take stealth away from thieves and let them stay exactly the same in all other regards”. If you’re going to simply misunderstand things and then also twist my words on top of it, you’re the exact type of overly defensive, illogical person I wanted to avoid. I will engage you no further until you wise up.

And, for your information, I did not say DAoC was a perfectly balanced game, I said the light armor classes were good – and they were for the entire time I played the game. And your referencing of stealth classes being used a lot in DAoC is precisely my point. Give people invisibility, they realize it is ridiculously easy to use and very powerful, hence they end up relying on it far too much. Again, you’ve completely twisted my words to fit the strawman you’ve built up.

So, ironically, you’ve agreed with me that stealth was abused in that game. A bit counterintuitive to what you seemed to be intending to argue – which is that stealth is fine in these types of games. You’ve sunk your own ship here and were never worth talking to in the first place, you’re addicted to your stealth abuse (while simultaneously ironically saying it was a problem in DAoC) and you’ll see no logic or reason regarding it. Perhaps you could take another look at what I actually said, which is that the Thief in this game could have been designed entirely without stealth of any form and still be effective, it did not need to go down the design route that it did.

Good day.

UnknownFreak.2805:

Mesmer is not OP, if you fail with one timing in a 1v2, may happen in 1v1 aswell, you die almost instantly, but however if your timings are correct you can crush anything, well not a 1v5 and up

Mesmer is not even that strong 1v1, it only happens when bad players get confused by the illusions.

It’s actually incredibly hard to keep any competent melee class off of you, people are realizing now it’s quite easy to keep track of the real Mesmer and just beat their face in, especially Thieves with their myriad stuns, snares and roots. It is because of this that glass cannon shatter builds are essential for Mesmers, you will never kill melee in your face unless you counter their damage with even more of your own.

Of course I have been involved in the humiliating butt kicking of up to 3 enemies before, but they’re always bad puggers. Against good players you should struggle in most 1 on 1s and a 1v2 should be unwinnable. Anything else that happens is the result of playing against bad people and has nothing to do with the Mesmer itself. Those same people would probably have lost to me if I was any other class.

I used to always think of Warrior as an easy kill, until I started going against Warrior players that competently busted out shield stance with good timing and would counter an entire shatter. Stuff like that is what you see with good players, whereas a bad Warrior would just keep trying to Hblades you and probably forget he has a second weapon to swap to.

If people just played at higher levels more often, they’d see this game is incredibly balanced.

Braxxus.2904:

Puandro.3245:

Thiefs havent been nerfed enough, but they need buffing in other areas.

Truth.

Man it would be nice to get rid of this whole invisibility alpha strike invisible trololo playstyle and make them more thiefy. More survivability through evades, blinds, interrupts and stuff. Swashbuckler/duelist like.

People would hate them less if it wasn’t for the same tired trololostealthyburststealthystealthy crap that keeps cropping up for the ganker class in mmo’s.

If you are familiar with Dark Age of Camelot, they had a set of classes exactly like this. They were considered “light armor” classes that were in between the warrior archetypes and the assassin archetypes. They wore mid-level armor and had a focus on “dirty fighting”, but did not involve any forms of stealth or invisibility. Instead, their focus was on positional combat, they would be more effective when attacking from the sides or from behind and when confronted with direct combat, their goal was to distract or evade.

They fulfilled the role of high melee DPS, positional combat and misdirection while not relying one bit on stealth and they were a highly effective PvP class. Considering that DAoC is an 11 year old game, if Mythic was able to implement this type of class back then, there’s no reason games can’t do it today.

I think the Thief should have been more designed with tactical combat in mind, as opposed to giving them such a wide variety of in-combat stealth abilities. Just because you have a DPS focused melee class doesn’t mean it has to be like fighting a kitten poltergeist.

Whether or not someone beats a Thief, the response is always the same, they get frustrated that a class disappeared on them multiple times and was allowed to keep getting opening shots on them. It’s just a downer in general to fight Thieves, even if you’re able to beat them every time, it is annoying and not fun at all, you don’t feel as if you’re matching wits with them or comparing tactics, you just feel like you’re fighting someone who needs constant crutches. Stealth in general removes the need to think into the future, which I feel is a problem in any game. It just allows you to sit and wait for the opening to present itself, rather than having to make the opening yourself which is what every other class in the game has to do.

Though I’m sure I’ll get a lot of overly defensive Thief players replying to this, I’m not going to lie about how I feel about a class that constantly disappears during fights. The Thief could have been designed other ways and still be completely viable and effective as a class.

Not bad, I used a similar build when I first started playing Mesmer in PvP and it worked well in a lot of scenarios. What this build is incredibly good for is being able to deal with bunkers, it obviously takes a while, but you should be able to kill any bunker in the game with a build like this. So, in fact, it is not completely useless for high level PvP, seeing as how it’s getting common to deal with teams running up to 3 bunkers.

Wise raises the point, however, that you are even more on the cusp of death than ever before with this type of build. Especially when one of the ever bothersome glass cannon Thieves decides to show up and ignore everything while bursting you down.

I’ve grown tired of trying to explain to people the complexities of the Mesmer class, so I’m just going to just start using the old WoW forum response:

“The class is fine, learn to play.”

I know it will never happen, but it would be awesome to see real life stuff in the Gem Store, like apparel, character plushies, mousepads, etc. Well, even if they’d consider doing that, it wouldn’t come in less than a week for the event, lol.

Whatever they do decide will be fine, I’m not going to look a gift horse in the mouth.

Everything in every MMO is basically a grind. It’s just disguised in different superficial ways. There’s always a treadmill style progression at work and GW2 is no different.

The only MMOs that never did this were Ultima Online and, subsequently, Darkfall and Mortal (both of which were heavily inspired by UO).

It’ll be ready when it’s ready.

But also don’t be surprised if they scrap the idea entirely. I remember a big selling point of Counter-Strike: GO was supposed to be cross platform gameplay so that 360, PS3 and PC players were all on the same servers, they touted it for over a year and then scrapped it near release. Companies change ideas all the time, Anet may realize the guesting feature is too cumbersome for their servers or something.

But for now, as far as I know, the idea is still planned. Just have no idea when.

But why did you put sounds of people farting in the video?

Numot.3965:

Mesmers have more than shatter burst with sword/pistol + staff as viable builds. Shatter burst just has a level of extreme effectiveness that isn’t matched by the alternatives. Greatsword (yes I’ll go there, since I play a GS mes) is still alright, staff bunker is still solid. Scepter needs some serious help (its getting better though).

Fixing elements that lead to degenerate play is part of fixing the class, and its not like all changes happen in some magical vacuum were stuff is changed to just suck. Things like functionality changes have, and will continue to happen.

I actually barely use sword/anything. I have always been a GS+Staff player and still play that way, it is my favorite method and I’ve gotten pretty good at confusing enemies and maintaining effective kiting while still throwing good chunks of shatter damage at them. I definitely do not think GS+Staff is kittened by any means, it is just the kiting shatter build, while the sword/X is the melee shatter build.

The problem with any other build, as you say, is they lack effectiveness. When you’re not churning out burst damage or at least doing consistent damage as a Mesmer, you’re a detriment to your entire team and at that point you may as well have just hopped on another class entirely. Every class has to play to their strengths, the problem is that Mesmer is one of the classes that only has one real strength right now.

If we had equally effective options for builds, we’d be using them a lot more. As I said in an above post, I’d actually love to run a Mantra build, but it’s so weak that I’d be wasting a spot on my team if I did it in any serious capacity.

hackks.3687:

I’ve never understood the point of having attack skills that include a 100% defensive attribute. Melee attacks have always been about risk vs reward with only intelligent positioning and timing as means for mitigating that risk. A 100% defense on attack is doing dmg with impunity and removes the requirement of being thoughtful as to when and how you approach the target. It’s essentially removing a much needed skill requirement.

As for those Mesmers concerned about being a light armored class and having to jump into the fray to execute melee burst without the safety net of immunity being built into the skill, all I can say is: “Welcome to the club. Necros and Eles have been expecting you.”

Mesmer having a melee ability that roots them in place without that invulnerability would result in a lot of dead Mesmers. Even the most defensive Mesmer builds are pretty easy to kill, the class as a whole has little emphasis on true defense.

There are two PvP playstyles for Mesmer, both of which utilize a similar burst damage philosophy. The only difference is one is more kite oriented and one is based around melee with the sword. You’re basically saying “Take away the one thing that makes a Mesmer in melee range viable”. It has nothing to do with timing or a skill requirement, a sword Mesmer outright needs that damage avoidance, the class lacks the escape abilities of other similarly weak classes. We can blink once a fairly long cooldown and we can swap to staff and use phase retreat, the latter takes the sword out of the equation so you are trading some offense for a quick evasion move. You’ve got Decoy in the mix, but frankly it is more for going invisible while people are chasing you, when you use it in close combat, you end up still taking damage while invisible because you don’t have much time to move anywhere, it’s more or less just used to generate a quick clone in close quarters.

When you compare the Mesmer’s evasion and escape abilities to other classes, you’ll find that, overall, the Mesmer is quite lacking. We can get caught and have our skull crushed in much easier than it can be done to a Thief or Ele. Honestly, the Thief is often a better “mesmer” than the Mesmer itself.

And if your idea is just “bring the Mesmer down to the same level of some other weak classes”, I think that is the wrong way to look at things. Nothing beneficial is going to come by further nerfing a class that is already difficult to play and dies easily. Elementalists, while currently build limited (just like the Mesmer), have an incredibly strong survivalist build for PvP which makes them slippery and able to soak up a lot of damage, the Mesmer is just the opposite, our viable PvP build is a burst damage build, we lack in the defensive options.

And I do feel bad for Necros and to some extent Engineers. But the solution is to fix these classes, not immediately nerf their few viable builds and leave them with nothing.

Well, I don’t like the fact GS/Hammer Warriors can knock me all around and then spam Hblades on me when I’m knocked down. I don’t like the fact Thieves are constantly stealthing and jumping on me again. I don’t like that bunker Guardians and Eles can survive against 3+ people for a decent amount of time.

There are a lot of things I don’t like but it doesn’t mean they’re not an integral part of those classes.

Please, just play a Mesmer for a while, like up to level 80. Learn about the class and how ridiculously easy it dies when you don’t manage everything perfectly. You need to understand that when you’re complaining about burst damage Mesmers, you’re complaining about what is basically the only viable build for Mesmers. You should play the class and see how ridiculously underpowered Mantras are or you should try setting up a long-term damage attack by getting 3 Phantasms up (I’ll give you a hint, it’s freaking impossible in PvP, which is a huge reason why we use shatter-focused builds instead).

What you’re asking is to just hit Mesmers with even more nerfs to their only playable PvP build. It’s like when people complain about bunker D/D Elementalists and they don’t realize so much of that class is broken that they’re using what is considered the only build that allows them to compete.

Yes, I know it is annoying to have a Mesmer frontload a bunch of damage and leave you with some confusion stacks to boot, but your goal should be getting Anet to fix the class so that other builds are more viable, not trying to get them to nerf the only thing that allows us to compete in PvP. Trust me, I would welcome more diversity with this class, a lot of us are interested in Mantra builds or “pet” builds, but both mantras and phantasms pretty much stink, the only thing we tend to do with phantasms is let them blow their attack and then just treat them as ammunition for a shatter. I’d love the ability to be more tanky as well and have a focus on debuffs and other stuff as well, but that’s another weak and unviable build.

Until the Mesmer has more viable options available, you’re looking at the only build we can really use in PvP. If you get that nerfed, this class, which is already one of the more underplayed classes in the game along with the Necromancer and Engineer, will basically just die. I know it seems like you see Mesmers in PvP a lot, but you actually don’t see them as much as you think, you just tend to remember dealing with them, because statistically Mesmer is a very underplayed class.

I might get chastised for this, but I play in dungeons the same way I play in PvP. I just spit out clones as fast as possible and shatter a lot. Anytime a Phantasm is involved I try to wait for it to get an attack off and then shatter everything immediately.

With all the methods I have to get clones out, I am usually never dry during trash fights at all. I try to save Decoy for when I catch some aggro, but I can kite/escape other ways pretty easily as well.

Aside from that, I just go through my rotation with GS and Staff. During certain fights I can get 3 iWarlocks up and let them spam though while I use my GS. I tend to almost never actually die and have, in many scenarios, kited bosses around and chipped away at them while my group ran back, so the fight didn’t reset.

It definitely needs something. Maybe a cripple effect, though that might be overpowered since then GS3 and the iZerker would both have a cripple, might be too easy to kite in PvP then. Maybe a knockdown?

I feel it certainly needs more return for your investment in PvP, since it forces you to ground target someone who is usually moving (given the small reticle while trying to hit a moving enemy, it is easy to time it slightly off and have it be a wasted attempt) and it makes you stand still to cast it. Anet obviously felt the old version was a bit too strong, back when it was a direct damage type move instead of a reticle (I believe it also did better damage back then), but they made it too weak when they changed it.

It needs one or some combo of the following:

- Cripple
- Knockdown
- Larger reticle
- Revert back to direct damage
- Ability to cast while moving
- More damage
- Trait somewhere in Domination line that makes it remove up to 3 buffs at a time or maybe just tack this on for free

These are just some suggestions, again, I am not suggesting ALL of the above be added, just at least one or two. My biggest desire would be the removal of 3 boons, but I’m thinking more about PvP here I suppose. Would certainly help with fighting bunker type builds to have an on-demand multi-boon removal.

Just introduce one hardcore server that has open world PvP and loot for anything not specifically soulbound (maybe tweak what is and isn’t soulbound for this server).

Dark Age of Camelot did it even though the regular servers only had dedicated PvP areas and most of the game world was PvE, but they came out with one or two hardcore servers and they became really popular.

Not saying they shouldn’t work on WvW or sPvP, but I think it would be a good idea to give something to the people who want a real challenge. It’ll probably never happen though.

I play on SBI and have for a long time now (was originally on Shiverpeaks but I changed to be with friends). SBI seems to have more quality PvPers overall, but SoS has become a massive bandwagon server and just runs over SBI and JQ with sheer numbers all the time. Doesn’t help that for some reason JQ seems very intent on often ganging up on SBI instead of trying to help fight the SoS zergs.

I think SBI’s biggest issue right now is that SoS is home to a ton of Oceanic players. During American/Canadian peak hours, everything seems evenly matched and SBI will often keep pace or take a lead, but during off hours the SBI and JQ numbers dwindle, but all the SoS Oceanic crew takes over for their Americans and Canadian players and their numbers stay very high, so at night SoS will take over a lot of stuff on multiple fronts.

So if you desire to play in T1, but want a challenge, SBI is a good place. We’re often dealing with larger numbers from SoS and JQ seems to have it out for us. There is always an objective on SBI, I can’t say the same for SoS though, they tend to camp a lot and seems like it would be generally boring to be the top dog with such a big population for so long. I much prefer having to push out and overcome the odds, if you do as well, SBI is the place for you.

I have a 5 year old PC and I still seem to load in faster than most other people. You could try lowering some settings and see if that helps, you probably aren’t going to be looking at pretty graphics in PvP much anyway.

If it’s really an issue, the best quick fix is to buy a cheapo solid state drive, get one of the small capacity ones intended for booting and just install GW2 to it. You can get the cheaper small capacity SSDs for 30-50 bucks on average depending on brand and capacity variances and what with Christmas sales still going on you can probably find a good deal on most websites.

And the post-match fighting is completely meaningless, so why does it matter? If someone is attacking you while you’re looking at the scoreboard, just let them kill you.

I waste moa morph on random thieves just because I know it makes them mad.

Same here. They used to whomp me until I played one and realized the Mesmer is playing a constant balancing act in PvP, you can slip up so easily and be killed in about 2 seconds flat. People complain about how Mesmer will phase retreat, decoy, mirror images, etc. because it makes them slippery, but once you get a Mesmer locked in, it’s game over, by FAR the easiest kill in the game, we die seemingly quicker than Elementalists and Thieves.

People just need to understand when a Mesmer is annoyingly teleporting, going invis, knocking you back with GS 5, etc. that is their ENTIRE defense, once you break through that, you win. If you’ve played WoW, it’s exactly like the Mage, you need to force them to burn their survival abilities early, then they’re sitting ducks.

Another thing people do is panic when they see all the enemy names and they forget they’re just clones and phantasms that die very quickly. In a group fight around an objective in sPvP, one Mesmer can make inexperienced players panic and deter new enemies from coming into the fight (they will think it’s a lost cause battle due to the “numbers”). But that’s the whole point of this class, mind games, tricks and illusions, a Mesmer can make you panic and think you’re losing a fight when you’re actually not, but because you THINK you are you start to play poorly and make bad decisions.

When you actually play the class you see all the tricks from the other side and realize that, very often, the Mesmer player was most likely in a panic as well, hoping so badly you’d ignore him and get confused by the clones. Even the most burst-heavy shatter builds take some time to kill someone, when people realize that time is their window of opportunity to kill a Mesmer, the OP complaints will lessen.

I will agree Mesmers are wickedly effective in group battles when left alone, though. When I get to hide behind a few meatshields I unleash havoc. Our attacks do not draw much attention either, so when you’re just sitting back unharmed, people often assume you’re not doing much, then they see the Mind Wrack and Confusion damage in their death log and go complain on forums.

Play what you’re going to have fun playing. If the recent Mesmer changes have made the class not fun for you, find something else. It’s that simple. Don’t just play a game, any game, if you’re not enjoying it.

I started off as a Guardian and enjoyed it until I got it higher in levels, it didn’t even get nerfed or anything, I just started finding things I didn’t enjoy, like lack of mobility, lack of ranged abilities, consistent but overall low damage output (with the best spike being possibly the easiest thing to dodge in the world). I picked up Mesmer for a change of pace and I absolutely love it.

It keeps giving me error code 42:1000:7006:852 when I try to log-in.

I have not been able to log-in for a few hours now, I keep getting this same error code. I don’t know if the actual log-in servers are down or if this is specifically related to my account or ISP/router. I’ve never had this problem before. There do not appear to be any signs of my account being tampered with so I’ve written off a hijacking as a possibility. Is this happening to anyone else? My friend logged in just fine and is playing right now, but maybe it sent him through a different log-in server or something.

I was playing just fine yesterday, all of this has happened after downloading the most recent patch.

I was told that when you right-click the name to report what someone said, the report automatically involved that specific line of text for Anet’s convenience. For example, the other day in sPvP some guy was saying anti-gay and racial slurs, so I just right-clicked his name from the chat box and reported him for verbal abuse. It never gave me an option to provide any further information or anything. Just a drop down box to select the type of report and that’s it.

thatmaskedman.4508:

Excellent work, but I have to disagree with your conclusion about the GS. Either the attempted fix didn’t work, or the fix hasn’t been implemented yet. I say this for two reasons.

First, the random missing on the berserker is present nowhere else in the game, and the high variance of said missing is inconsistent with having sPvP be balanced. Since the changes to the GS that introduced the miss chance bug were because of sPvP, I highly doubt that it’s intentional.

Second, there are still other phantasms that hit just as hard as the pre-11/15 berserker according to your own testing. If it was intentionally nerfed to reduce mesmer damage output, I have to think warlock and swordsman would have been hit as well. Yes, they are single target rather than aoe, but aoe is much less important in an sPvP format compared to others.

Please keep up the good work though.

AOE aside, you’re forgetting a big reason iZerker is important in PvP is for the cripple. As of the change, whether intended or not, the wait time before you get that cripple applied to an enemy in PvP makes a WORLD of difference. It can allow a player to get out of the iZerker’s range or break line of sight with it and throw a wrench into your kiting plans.

Being able to pop the iZerker with the sole intention of slowing someone down was a big thing for me in PvP. I have not been able to see this for myself since I’m having log-in issues since the patch, but if it’s true the iZerker is going to take an extra second to apply that cripple, it’s a big deal for me. A very big deal. Maybe it’s a “scrub” move or whatever, but I found it vital to both staying away from annoying melee and for chasing down fleeing enemies. I couldn’t care less in PvE, but 1 second can cause a win or loss in any given PvP fight.

I’d probably complain, but I can’t even log-in to the game since the patch due to the log-in server constantly crapping out.

Not really, it’s just that the playerbase is no longer sitting around the racial cities anymore. And most people got their main to 80 and stick with that, which is why you don’t see as many people while leveling (and it will be worse for underplayed races like Asura and/or simply for zones which seem boring to people, I notice the snowy Norn areas are the deadest of dead).

Lion’s Arch for me is always forcing me into an overflow, which indicates everyone goes there as opposed to any of the racial cities. And the LA overflows themselves are also packed and the chat moves incredibly fast. The game is not dying or underpopulated, the community simply spends more time in certain areas. And you can’t really gauge how many of the people are on sPvP all the time, I think that is a factor as well. A lot of people may not care about 90% of this game’s content and instead look at sPvP as the only thing they’re interested in. I already know there’s a rift between sPvP and WvW, seems most people only prefer one or the other.

But look at any past MMO, it’s always the same. Once a game is a few months old and people start hitting max level and spending more time in PvP and dungeons, the other game areas become rather desolate. It gives the illusion that the game is dying, which is unfortunate when new players pick up the game post-release and can’t find other people to do group events with.

However, I do fear that if Anet does not step up soon, a lot of PvP players will start quitting. There is only a handful of small sPvP maps, not much game mode variation and matches end quickly. There are FPS games these days with maps bigger and more exciting than what we have in sPvP, that is fairly sad. And WvW isn’t any better, you have the same map repeated three times and then the Eternal Battlegrounds. Even if you play entirely for the competition, you will still get tired of how bland the environments become after a short while. They definitely need a CTF game mode for sPvP , perhaps an offense/defense object push like in TF2 and maybe also plain old death match.

Tom Gore.4035:

If you didn’t get it, this was also a post directed to ANet so they might in the future tweak the contents of the chests to make opening them more desirable.

Making the tonics tradeable would be a start. Roleplayers might be willing to pay some coin for those. Adding a chance for rare crafting materials would be even better.

As you agreed, at the moment the chests are not worth it. I’m not expecting them to become jackpots, but they need to be adjusted slightly.

Making the tonics useable in combat AND making them tradeable would be the ONLY ways to make them worth anything.

Heck, you can’t even jump while transformed…