Guild Wars 2

>"Can we come up with a system that doesn’t involve constant policing from GMs?"

Asking questions like this make me want to play the game less than I do nowadays.

Without an active team of GMs to police WvW, you will always have problems. You need to be more proactive in your solutions. Stop being cheapskates, Anet (it’s no secret that you guys pay your employees less than the industry average). You NEED a team of GMs to actively police WvW and to a lesser extent, sPvP.

I’ve stopped playing WvW almost entirely, because you guys refuse to put in the manpower necessary to properly referee the battlefield.

I am also of the opinion that the Outmanned buff and the Orb buffs should be swapped.

I gave up on it. Even though I did it during off-peak times, there were FAR too many people occluding my vision to see where I was standing, let alone where I needed to jump.

I never got past the first delayed floating stones segment. By the time the rest of the zerg moved through it so I could see where I was standing, it was already too late, and I had to start all over.

I must’ve tried at least a dozen times before getting more than utterly disgusted with the difficulty of the exercise.

It didn’t help that the only time I was able to try it was when all doors were forced open – all door meta-events were bugged on Blackgate prior to that patching.

Maybe next year.

I though that it means you do extra damage to people who are stunned, dazed, immobilized, etc, which to me makes more sense considering which trait line it’s found in.

To be blunt, after replacing my starter scepter with a sword, I never ever used another scepter again. I pretty much leveled 1-80 never using the scepter outside of the tutorial zone. I used GS, Sword/Focus, and to a lesser extent, Staff.

I’ve never found a situation where I’ve ever said “man, I should really be using a scepter in this fight…”

I’ve posted my GS Cloneshaterer build in the official mesmer builds thread. Maybe if I were running a scepter/sword build centered around Retaliatory Shield (gain Retaliation on block) for WvW/sPvP, but that would have to be a really tanky, non-DPS oriented build to play effectively I think (it would require a high skill level, and lower ping than I can achieve…)

I typically only use feedback in dungeons (it helps immensely during big groups of ranged foes), however last night, someone used it on me – while I was manning a cannon on SM Castle. Now that HURT BAD. Took me down the first time, but I got helped back up on my feet. The second time I saw it I realized I needed to stop firing, and was a little more patient, but all it takes is once…

Clone Shattering GS Mesmer – PvE/Dungeon, maybe even WvW

20 Crippling Dissipation (or Mental Torment) & GS Training
20 Desperate Decoy & Deceptive Evasion
0
10 Mender’s Purity
20 Precise Wrack (or Compounding Power) & Illusionary Elasticity

Decoy, Null Field, and Signet of Illusions (or Mirror Images, depending on how tanky I want my clones to be).

Itemize enough Precision to get your Crit rate at least over 35% and you’ll get a crit roughly once per Spatial Surge. This is kinda important, because when you trait Deceptive Evasion, your crits fuel your endurance (thanks to the minor Dueling trait Critical Infusion), which in turn become clones. After that, do what you want in terms of balancing Power and Vitality/Toughness, but I like just going all out Power/Precision/Crit damage – this isn’t a build that does a lot of Condition Damage. Basically, you should be getting enough crits to keep Vigor up constantly without having to trait Vigorous Revelation.

With Ill. Celerity and GS Training, GS#2’s cooldown should be about 5 or so seconds. This is your bread & butter. Simply put, this build emphasizes generating clones quickly, stacking might and vulnerability, and doing big damage with frequent shatters.

In addition, this build requires very little tweaking to be dungeon-ready. Just swap Mender’s Purity with Medic’s Feedback since you’ll probably be rezzing your teammates more frequently than they’ll be rezzing you (at least, that how it usually goes for me in dungeons…). That and using Feedback on nasty ranged mobs will make everyone’s life easier.

For WvW, I like to use this build for scouting as well. Mesmers do well against anything 1v1 and we’re just as good at escaping our foes when we’re outgunned. Just swap in Veil for the Signet instead and you’ll feel stealthier than a Thief.

The general idea is to keep your foe at range by keeping him distracted with your clones and iBerserker. Use your Ill. Wave to push mobs away, and dodge whenever your meter is full. Crippling Dissipation will help you kite foes whether you let a mob take out a clone or you just overwrite one.

I use Sword/focus for my swap set, but I find I rarely have to – usually its just to unload a Blurred Frenzy on a group of mobs, maybe summon a warden, and then back to GS.

Clones generated with Deceptive Evasion don’t always take your target. They often go for whatever is closest to them when they spawn.

This has affected me in WvW small-scale skirmishes, where my clones start attacking a near-by normally-passive mob instead of the enemy players trying to tear my lungs out for scouting their holdings.

Its great in WvW, firing down on zergballs from battlements, or for dealing damage from safe distances within your own zergball – it’s what I like to do when I don’t have a siege weapon handy.

http://www.youtube.com/user/MrPrometheus0110

Watch his two mesmer videos. Staff, when properly traited, is just plain OP. Really, run a condition build, and just watch mobs melt under Chaos Storm while being pelted by 2 condition-flinging clones, then there’s the staff phantasm doing extra damage for every affliction… I’ve adjust my build to be a little more like his, and it has paid off well.

12. Don’t buy violet weapons from vendor in the Mists, it has no dps (its probably for WvWvW). Buy exotic orange weapons.

They have a use, just not in an actual sPvP match or open WvW gameplay.

If you look carefully at these weapons, they have a steady damage rating – something like 125-125. These are the “Steady” weapons, and their use is exclusively for build theorycrafting and comparing relative DPS of a particular sPvP build against the npc dummies in the sPvP lobby area. You’ll see how much your traits and itemization will affect a particular weapon skill’s damage output without the natural fluctuation built into the game.

Quite ingenious, actually – it should lead to a much better-informed PvP crowd and better play-balance because of these tools the developers were so kind to leave for us players.

Maybe re-write this one as “The Purple ‘Steady’ sPvP weapons are for theorizing, not for use in a match or WvW. Use them against the dummies in the lobby area to see how your traits and itemization affect skill damage output.”