Guild Wars 2

My guild did the Gilded Hollow with just 7 people. We have many more members than that but only 7 people participated.

All you have to do is kill the mobs that regenerate the worms shield then burst it down. Dont get distracted by irrelevant mobs and make sure all members are focused on the same target.

The champ axe guy is a bit of a jerk though so be careful.

One of the problems you always see on these kinds of threads is that people are mistakenly thinking that power block and confusing suggestions are the same. They are also making the accossiation between dazes and powerblock.

Power block procs on an INTERRUPT not a daze. Interrupting an oponent requires finesse and knowledge of your oponents skills. Yes you can spam your dazes, stuns, knockbacks, pulls, and sinks and hope to get lucky but thats the biggest mistake a new mesmer makes.

Confounding suggestions is a different story and has way too easy a synergy with the shatter damage increase trait on targets not activating a skill.

I like staff the most of all the revenant weapons so far. Might I suggest however that the number four skill becomes a blast finisher and doesnt root you in cplace on use. I feel this would help with the clunkiness of the animations and combo better with the jalis legend.

Furthermore, I feel the number two skill should be a little more punishing damage wise.

Mesmer is very squishy, so very squishy. Get one get one good cc when theyre out of stealth, burst and watch their health drop.

When they go into stealth kite backwards. Dodge forwards through the mirror blade which you can see even instealth. Dodge the illusionary berserker which you will see spawn in your peripheral vision. Dont stand there and tank that man.

Mesmer burst hasnt really increased all too much despite the outcries in the forum. What has greatly increased is the mesmers survivability which was sorely needed.

Just stop with all the nonsense.

Blind through evade is not something unique to mesmer, other classes can cureently do this.

Invulnerability and blocks isnt something uniquevto mesmers. Other classes can do do this.

High spike damage is not something unique to mesmers, other classes can do this.

Come on people just stop. Stop it stop it stop it. What is wrong with you all.

Its the payoff for having to stand there and charge for 2 and a half seconds and it only procs chaotic interruption and power block if you interrupt a skill.

It has always been an instant cast skill. All mantras have been an insta cast skill since the beginning of time itself and youre just now complaining about it?

Furthermore, this skill can be countered by blind and atability, and the number of charges is clearly written on the mesmers status bar.

PLay a zerker mantra mesmer with 4 mantras fo your utilities. That takes micromanagement to a new level but the burst, oh the burst is glorius

Wetpaw.3487:

Amityel.5324:

I can still beat them!!!

nerf my class and i will still burst pple down and they will still call for mesmer nerf
really……I hope ANET balance team has a brain and wont judge classes based on solo queuers and hot joiners

I don’t want the mesmer to be nerfed.

I would be happy if Anet gave my Ranger half of the tricks a mesmer can pull off and call skill. Forget half, how about just one thing like pets that actually hit moving targets, distortion, reflect, blur, instant casts, portal, teleport, transform, blinds, rip boons, pass condi…stealth!

The added stealth blows my mind, Mesmers shouldn’t even have access to stealth in the first place.

Show me 1 single mesmer build that can do ALL that. Show me.

If mesmers are playing with a lot of reflects nowadays, how about not mindlessly spamming longbow skills from afar. How about observing the skills that are activated.

There are so many bad mesmers running around now I dont know why you guys have so much trouble killing them. Mesmers still use the same old greatsword mindwrack rotation theyve always done to spike people. This burst wad insane before the patch and is still insane now.

Yes it sucks when they sneak up on you during a fight and drop you to the ground, but theyve always been able to do this and so have many other classes. Im lookin at you mr rapid fire.

Love it. Its much better than the previous two iterations. Thanks robert.

Its a shame that we cant double cast heals orc elites but i admit that would be pretty powerful.

Take mistrust instead of deceptive evasion. There is no cooldown on those aoe confusion hits. I use perplexity cancer for extra effect. Also, i prefer the inspiration line to the chaos line while roaming. Condition clear on shatter and heal frees up space on your utility bar for another skill.

In my experience with runes of the pack, focus, and sigil of inspiration with a bit of boon duration food, running over 1 temporal curtain keeps near perma swiftness up for a good 30 to 40 seconds without having to constantly time your curtains right between signet swiftness refreshes.

The signets passive is able to maintain swiftness on you for quite some time with this set up.

Dont even touch inspiration. We finally get real support with this line.

Unicorns are fabulous. Inb4 mesmers new unicorn transform.

I’m playing a sword/sword staff lockdown variant specced into inspiration for survival and condi clear and to poop out phantasmal defenders like theres no tomorrow. I take mirror, blink, mantra of distraction, mimic, and mass invis.

I love it. It just flows, and with the kiting potential of a double blink and low cd staff blink it just feels so fluid. I love it. Even thieves find it hard to keep up because theyre not used to fighting classes that are just as fast as they are and can teleport as much as they can. I finally dont have a sense of dread fall over me when Ive got a good theif on my tail.

While I think at this point in time ALL damage, direct and condi based is a little overtuned on everyclass and PUs stealth uptime encourages selfish playstyles with not a lot of counterplay, I think our power traits, especially interrupt and shatters, have a synergy that we have never seen before.

Please dont kitten that up.

Im sure theyre basing their decision on what to nerf and what to buff in the live game environment. That was the purpose of releasing the patch before the expansion.

Windwalker.7421:

Setting aside that that is a poster child definition of “knee jerk” balancing, due to a ludicrously small sample size that you’re basing the adjustment on…

Let’s just assume you’re right. So instead of achieving balance here via careful tweaking of new abilities, we take a chainsaw to a trait that has never been deemed viable before? A 50% nerf is not exactly a “small and careful adjustment” it can easily end up making that trait completely worthless. (And in the opinion of many that have actually played with MtD for a while, it will do exactly that.)

If something that clearly wasn’t overpowered before, in fact quite the opposite, how then does it make sense to target this trait, rather than the many other new variables in the equation? I’ll tell you why! Because it’s an easy target for lazy people who really don’t care how it works out in the end. Anyone else would have thought up a different, more careful approach, than to whack something into oblivion with a giant nerf-bat.

Again, the most entertaining part is that this comes after the removal of the +50% damage bonus to Torment damage on moving targets for traited Scepter! lol! That kinda reminds me of the title of a new GM trait in Illusions.

A single stack of Torment per shatter is just plain bad as long as CoF remains on double the CD as MW. It literally kills the concept of a Condition Shatter build in one fell swoop. (Especially considering how bad CoF is compared to MW.)

Oh I’m certain we’ll still have single target Condition builds that will rock other classes pants off in 1v1…but so what? We’ve always had this with PU/Condie builds. The problem is that our ability to pump out viable AoE condition damage to even remotely compete with Power-Shatter, is gone. Added to that, Power Shatter has gained a lot of survivability, making the entire reason to go Condie Shatter much less desireable than before already. Now, with lacking AoE damage output, there really isn’t much of a reason to go for Conditions on a Mesmer, with the same old exception as before to solo roam and 1v1.

So I guess they balance Mesmers around 1v1 performance, but not anyone else. Got it!

I dont disagree with anything besides the low blow in the first paragraph.

Initially I was on the side of the devs until I saw that they just binned confusing combatants before we got a chance to playtest it. Im now dissappointed.

I merely added the link as a point of observation. I wasnt trying to prove a point but some of you guys are out for blood obviously.

Get a grip.

TyPin.9860:

fluxit.8247:

Here’s some food for thought though: http://www.twitch.tv/shinryuku_ku/v/6476506 skip ahead to 3:20:00 ish mark. One of the preview streamers tried a condition style mesmer. Although it was a terrible build and something he hashed together in about 30 seconds the condition output was still quite high when he shattered properly.

So?

EDIT: And next he shows a warrior. And he just destroys his sparring partner not even being anywhere near bothered by his attacks. And the damage output with that warrior is worlds stronger with several 4k instant hits in a short time. This video shows nothing and doesn’t provide any clue for anything.

Wow….just wow. Great replies so far guy. Just fantastic. :/

SO!?

This thread is about the mesmer community’s worries about our ability to stack conditions after the mtd nerf. This streamer used a less than optimal build against Koroshi, a very well known roaming streamer, and was able to stack enough conditions on him to down him a couple of times.

I’m making a very simple observation. Nothing more, nothing less. Thank you for your kind reply.

Here’s some food for thought though: http://www.twitch.tv/shinryuku_ku/v/6476506 skip ahead to 3:20:00 ish mark. One of the preview streamers tried a condition style mesmer. Although it was a terrible build and something he hashed together in about 30 seconds the condition output was still quite high when he shattered properly.

Fay.2357:

fluxit.8247:

Unlike before, mtd WONT be our sole and most valuable condition trait. With the patch on tuesday we are getting many new ways to apply confusion, buffs to pistol which is our best and most reliable source of bleeding, big buffs to scepter if you take the new grand master, high protection uptime with staff, buffs to stealth duration, a complete rework of the confusion condition and on top of all this IP is becoming baseline and mtd is becoming a master trait.

I think mesmer will do just fine stacking conditions on a target even with a nerf to mtd. Furthermore, we now have a much more potent array of conditions rather than purely relying on torment and the odd confusion spike.

I think you’re entirely wrong.

MtD is our only source of burst torment outside of the scepter block. We’ve always had a bit of bleed pressure from sharper images, and the pistol trait isn’t really going to make any groundbreaking changes there. We still have poor access to burning and poison aaaaand that’s it.

Without MtD we’re left with a bunch of various ways to apply confusion, none of which are better than what an engineer can do, and that’s about it.

How could I possible argue with a ‘this is true because I say so argument’. Its like youre a believer in the many faced god ‘It is known’. :p

To be fair though I made my comments on the matter before I found out that they got rid of confusing combatants. I cant believe they just dropped it.

Im beginning to agree with the sentiments of this thread. Mesmer is in no doubt headed down nerf bat lane again. Please no. Im so excited for the new mesmer. Its the only thing that really keeps me playing.

As someone who stood by mtd ever since the september balance last year Im agreeing with the devs on this one. People in this thread are tunnel visioning.

Unlike before, mtd WONT be our sole and most valuable condition trait. With the patch on tuesday we are getting many new ways to apply confusion, buffs to pistol which is our best and most reliable source of bleeding, big buffs to scepter if you take the new grand master, high protection uptime with staff, buffs to stealth duration, a complete rework of the confusion condition and on top of all this IP is becoming baseline and mtd is becoming a master trait.

I think mesmer will do just fine stacking conditions on a target even with a nerf to mtd. Furthermore, we now have a much more potent array of conditions rather than purely relying on torment and the odd confusion spike.

Edit.

I agree, karl shouldnt be allowed to touch mesmer, his ridiculous comments and changes to thief were like watching a little boy in a candy shop and hes proven in the past that he doesnt understand mesmer as well as some of the other devs.

For some reason, in ebg the other night and on an eotm map tonight I suddenly kept dying. Just instantly dying while walking around.

So anyway, I was with my guildies in eotm looking for some fun and then suddenly it happened again. I’d walk like 5 feet and instantly die except this time my guild mates rezzed me and I was on land with my water weapons.

Except, I entered some kind of invulnerable god mode, my guild mates were being rushed by a zerg, but I saw nothing but my guild mates: no enemies, no npcs, just the environment and my party members. I couldn’t use any skills, and even though they were shouting commands in TS about a giant blob, all I could see is my party and all I could do is rez. Furthermore, in addition to my water weapons, and not being able to do anything but rez, while rezzing my animation looked like I was underwater.

Anyway, so we port back and I tell them what’s going on and when party members left my party they disappeared off my screen and I disappeared off their’s.

I solved the issue by logging out then back in again but this seems like a very weird bug and I would really appreciate it if I didn’t just randomly spontaneously combust while in WvW.

I’ve noticed a few complaints from other people (very rarely however) in Map chat about spontaneously combusting, so I think it isn’t just me.

Just to clarify however, this isn’t all the time. It usually happens very randomly and on specific wvw maps. I don’t know about PvE because I don’t play it much these days.

I want to be a special sbowflake but the cooldown is exceptionally long.

They really should’ve taken this chance to buff the healing of this skill a bit more. Let’s compare it to thief’s withdraw heal. It’s on the same cd but thief’s withdraw heal has better healing and arguably has a better secondary effect; rolling backwards and avoiding damage.

Robert seemed quite fair when he was talking about his class and his thought patterns behind toning skills down so they aren’t TOO op.

The guy after him however when he was talking about thief and guardian. Josh and him basically spent the entire time chuckling to themselves about how OP it was but it’s okay cos thief and guard are supposed to be OP, hehe.

It works for signet distortion as well but whether or not it procs off distortion you grant to allies is something well have to wait and see.

Im on the fence about the price points. This is because I think the marketing team made a mistake in the way they presented their products. It is expensive for so many unknowns but its my belief, and I could be wrong, but prepurchase will be more expensive purely for the allure of gaining access to all future betas. I believe that on release they will reduce the price accordingly unless theyre hiding a mamoth amount of content.

This isn’t a question of being cheap. I drop 50s like theyre going out of fashion. I’m an impulsive guy. The thing that people aren’t happy about is value not price. I’m going to buy it anyway, but its my prerogative as a consumer to complain about my worries of value.

The REASON why there are so many salty people is because Anet has yet to convince a large amount of people of their exapnsion’s value or worth.

It is not your prerogative to tell us all to calm down and go away, or to shut up and just don’t buy the game.

It’s kind of like buying a LEGO bat-mobile set and the batman legoman being sold separately. lol. For an extra 10 bucks.

A new character slot can be bought for approximately 150 in game gold right now OR $10 US.

Today, A-net released a pet rock. That pet rock was worth about $4 US or 40% of the cost of a new character slot. If we look at it this way, A-net is basically telling us that their expansion is worth the same as around about 12 pet rocks or 5 character slots.

Let’s look at the price of the Living World 2 story pack which is worth about $17.50 US or about 270 in game gold. This expansion is the equivalent of ALMOST 3 Living World 2 story packs.

Their pricing structures have always been out of whack but I sure as hell hope I get way more contents worth out of my 50 dollars than 12 rocks.

Im taking mimic just for the escape potential of a double blink.

You got a thief hotcon your kitten Just stealth and double blink and laugh from a mile away. But keep running though cos thieves are pretty good at chasing, even at 2400 range.

Windwalker.7421:

I’m kinda split. Part of me says “Yay! More Burn!” and another is kinda peeved about the loss of condie-removal and the fact that 1 stack of Burn for 6s under the new system seems possibly weaker then 4 stacks of Confusion for 4s under the current system. More reliable yes, but possibly quite a bit weaker too.

“The Pledge”

Torch skills remove 1 condition from you when activated. While you are stealthed torch skills recharge 1.5% of their maximum recharge every second.

Don’t get too excited there girlfriends. Deceptive evasion is still a necessary evil in all of your builds if you want to be a quick burst in and out shatter mesmer.

What I love about this new system though is all the possibilities for mixing and matching. While I think a shatter mesmer with long stealth uptime could be deadly, it wouldn’t do as much burst as a shatter mesmer taking Dom, Dul, Illuss. This is simply due to the giant damage modifiers we recieved in Domination and Illusion trees.

I’m actually more interested in shatter specs with lots of sustain that take inspiration, or shatter lockdown specs. I don’t like the idea of us getting too much stealth. I think there is enough stealth in this game already.

I don’t know what your question is.

I love all of these changes. I even squealed when I saw a couple of them.

The only change I didnt like was the lack of change with thiefs stolen skill ectoplasm and their new improvisation trait which allows them to use it kittenING TWICE as if once wasnt bad enough.

Run on their own because venom share is easy to kill

Mesmer has THE best access to confusion in the game and has the only trait in the game that further increases confusion duration. Our only downfall has been somewhat clunky application of said confusion along with heavy handed confusion nerfs.

However, after the incoming core specialization update and the rework of confusion we will have hands down, no competition, THE best confusion application and in particular aoe confusion. New confusing combatants and MISTRUST FTW.

I have an interrupt confusion build in mind after the update, with mean, copious amounts of confusion and potentially 100 plus percent confusion duration (depending on what they do with condition duration after the update.

I don’t know if this is a bug, or has always been as intended but I’ve only just noticed now due to the ridiculous popularity of venom share thieves in wvw. What’s the go with venoms applying to cannons? I don’t know about other siege, but the fact that one thief can immobolise you, apply torment and some pretty hefty damage as well bleeding stacks all with one shot of a cannon, seems a bit much don’t you think?

If this is working as intended then I have lost all faith in the balance team.

Bumping for some love.

NiloyBardhan.9170:

Errr, GM can (probably) change server at his own will. Last time I checked “GM Proheals” was on TC (You can check others’ server by adding them and checking out the leaderboard list).

That’s why I used the conditional form “if”.

And by good I think the GM means all ebg is green and YB is cruising along at 500 points? Maybe good if the GM is currently playing on YB. Not so good if on FA or SoS.

Guild Video

Hello all,

My in-game name is Nero and I’m a representative of Discreet [Dx] (formally of SoS and HoD). We are currently on Fort Aspenwood and recruiting new members to join our SEA time raids.

If you’re looking to join a friendly and inviting wvw guild Dx is for you. We are looking for new friends to join our ranks to participate in SEA time raids. We raid 5 nights a week usually and although we have core builds our emphasis is usually on fun and you will never be pressured to change how you want to play unless we’re getting wiped repeatedly :P. We also do regular guild missions.

We have members from Australia, Malaysia, Singapore, HK, Japan, and other countries so we are quite international and can speak many languages although our raids are in English.

Our core members have been together for many years now and are well versed in “the art of the bag” so if you’re looking for some fun during SEA time and looking to make new friends why not give us a try.

Contact me in-game if you’re interested or have any questions (fluxit.8247) or you can leave your details here.

You can find out more by visiting our website: https://dx.guildlaunch.com/

Hope to see you on the battle field.

-Yoroshiku

Thank you for answering my question so fast. You have confirmed my suspicions. No more replies are necessary.

Hello all,

I would like to verify the authenticity of this in game mail before I click any links. I recently logged into Gw2 to find an in-game mail from a GM Veana Shadowseon. The mail basically says I need to click a link to verify my account due to currency transactions or abnormal logins and I have 72 hours to do so.

Could someone verify whether or not this is an authentic method of communication via users and anet staff members.

This has not been the method of communication for account verification in the past as usually anet communicates such issues through my email address and not in game mail. This looks like a phishing scam ALTHOUGH the url attached to the in-game mail looks like an official gw2 website address.

If this is an official request to verify my account within 72 hours might I make the suggestion to gms to not make it look like a scam and communicate via my account affiliated email address. It would be a whole lot more professional especially considering I CAN’T actually click urls within gw2.

I appreciate your responses. I’m highly suspicious of this mail but would prefer my account not be shutdown. Until then I will not be “clicking” the link.

Gliding! We want gliding in wvw. ?????

Levetty.1279:

Its a good first step, stealth in this game has more in common with exploits in other games instead of mechanics and has no counter play. Sorry thieves, not liking stealth is as much a l2p issue as going into stealth and running off when you health drops to 30% makes you good at the game.

If this makes Mesmer even worse in PvP then so be it, its already aggressively unfun whenever the enemy team has a thief (99%) of the time.

This is most likely a bug though and due to thief tears they will completly revert it instead of looking at whats happening and seeing how it can improve the game.

A little stealth has plenty of counterplay in an aoe heavy game. Perma stealth nonsense thieves have very little counterplay.

I dont want to see stealth nerfed in this way but i beleive some classes rely on this mechanic too much. At the same time a class like mesmer has very little disengage ability due to our low speed and lack of leap skills. This is why alittle bit of stealth goes a long way on a class like mesmer.

We dont have the crazy blinds and blocks of a guardian, we dont have the crazy evades and gap closers of a thief or ranger, we dont have the cleanse, boon, healing power, or speed of an ele or warrior, and we dont have the cc heavy, leaps and bounces of an engineer.

If anything mesmer needs stealth more than any other class for survival and while I have played plenty of theory crafted mesmer builds with very little stealth and survived alright when enemies want to focus you youre not gonna get away unless they are fools.

Fay.2357:

I will say that putting any sort of hard CC (which taunt is) onto a phantasm is an incredibly risky move. It opens up the potential for having someone locked down purely by AI, allowing you to just whale on them by stacking multiple phantasms and such. I’d strongly recommend against ever putting hard cc onto a phantasm.

It basically provides two possibilities. The first is that the cc is so weak that it’s completely useless. The second is that it’s strong enough to be useful….and so could be stacked and made overpowered. It would monstrously difficult to balance appropriately.

You are right in saying an aa taunt every 5s would be op, especially with all of our interrupt traits but I cant help but look at engineer rocket and thumper turrets. They have an aa, but have an overcharge feature that allows them to hard cc multiple enemies on a 20 sec cool down.

So perhaps for the phantasmal defender 7-8sec taunt might be too powerful, but what about an attack chain similar to turrets whereby we can ‘overcharge’ the defender causing it to taunt foes in a 600 radius.

I really think some form of taunt on a mesmer skill could help draw attention away from us and our phantasms. Our best skill for that imo is our tank phantasm, it just fits so well in my mind.

maha.7902:

Leodon.1564:

Fay.2357:

Phantasms, by their nature, are sustained dps. This means you want to put them up and keep them up, and this takes time and effort for each mob. With shatters, you just pop up a couple clones and then explode them. It takes very little time between DE and weapon skills, and doesn’t give them a lot of chance to be smushed by aoes.

You’re phrasing it like there is no problem but that is the problem. Too much of our DPS is dependent on class abilities (phantasms/shatters) that are inflexible and have a wide margin for how effective they are depending on the situation.

You mention that you need to keep phantasms up for each mob and that is the nature of our sustained DPS. You are ok with a DPS delivery method that encourages you to not use your class mechanic in order to do the most consistent DPS (which isn’t that great to begin with) and varies greatly depending on how many phantasms you can maintain? How much control do you have in keeping your Phantasms alive?

For shatters, you mentioned that your clones don’t have much chance to be smushed and that is true for small engagements but can you say that your statement remains true as the engagement scales bigger?

As long as our DPS is tied down to a method that we have no real control over and can be neutralized by something as simple as AOE, the strength of our class will vary greatly from encounter to encounter which is an inherent design flaw to me.

a class not being strong at all encounters is a design flaw?

maybe we should just delete all of the classes and make one called “fighter” which does everything, then we can solve this design flaw.

I put this to you. Name one game mode where warrior, ele or guardian are not valued.

With the new trait system you might see dd ele inspired shatter builds supporting your group with condition clears and healing while spiking the enemy. I dont believe this playstyle to be effective in the current state of pve butwe really dont know what anet has in store for us when they harp on about challenging group content. Hopefully we find out soon.

What attracts me to this game is not pve however, I find gw2 pve content to be boring which is a product of many things. But im still interested to see what they have to bring to this game mode.

Exactly I dont disagree with anything said so far except to say that wouldnt the viability of pd be improved by removing its damage component and replacing it with taunt.

According to the wiki, there is a bug whereby having more than 1 phantasmal defender out at a time negates its damage absorbing effects. So unless the bug is fixed, this idea would not work.

Edit
My apologies, I misread your response. But even still, I find that there would be more valuable utility skills. The question is do you currently use pd?

Furthermore I find it hard to justify speccing into chronomancy on a mtd shatter build since there are much more useful traits in other traitlines for the mtd playstyle.

Mimic should have copied one of your oponents utility skills at random to your utility bar for a single use from the start. Along with copying the skill it would take on the copied skill’s cooldown making it fair if the mesmer managed to copy an elite skill.

What us everyone’s thoughts about this utility skill with a long cast time. It is definitely one of the least popular phantasm skills with its cast time, 25 second cooldown and lackluster effect.

This skill is very niche as it is and although its ability to tank half the damage dealt to you and 4 allies is promising in a bunker style build I think it could do with an improvement.

I think as well asabsorbing damage to allies it should taunt your target every 7-8 seconds instead of dealing 91 base damage every 5 seconds. I feel like taunting a target would really help fulfill the role this phantasm was created for rather than just be a waste of a utility slot like it currently is.

Alternatively, rather than absorbing damage it could just be given a higher health pool similar to an engineers turret in addition to taunting. It would be similar to an engineers thumper turret in that respect.

In this way, the phantasmal defender could be an answer to the problem of phantasms aggroing targets too much and getting destroyed before they can reach their damage potential.

Thoughts?