Guild Wars 2

Ithilwen.1529:

I spoke to one of the balance team at Pax West. He believed that Mirage was “in a good spot.”

After some questioning, he hinted that ANET’s idea is that the Mirage play around the mirrors, ( which make aoe weakness. )

According to that dev, Mirage is basically fine. I don’t see us getting help any time soon. He also talked about nerfing chronomancer and seemed to feel it was OP.

In my eyes, that’s out-of-touch. We’ll see.

It’s like an entire spec built around the Dragonhunter utility that makes aegis on the ground that no one ever uses in any game mode.

OriOri.8724:

I don’t think the GW2 engine can even handle convincing illusions. The other player would have to be on a different team for you to damage them, but if they areon a different team then they can also damage you.

If you’re talking about the alignment swapping, there are is already a lot of interesting tech for it and an elite specialization that played with it could be a lot of fun.

Just for example, in Season 3 Episode 2 of LW you have that part where you are supposed to disguise yourself as a Mursaat. This makes all the Jades friendly to you. But if another players sees you, you register as an enemy to them. But you still see other players as friendly (At least I’m pretty sure this was the case). They didn’t enable players to attack the disguised players, but theoretically they could have.

Anyway, I’m just spit balling. Right now the deception skills are all bad, boring and none of them feel particularly deceptive.

Skuzz.6580:

and? Where does it say that this Elite spec should out damage a core spec and out evade another?
Elite specs are not meant to be far superior than other core specs, so yes, probably another core spec has more evades, another has more damage, Elite specs are meant to open more options and diversity, not give you an overpowered version of other core specs.

Pro tip: If you like Blurred Frenzy that much, just use it when specced into Mirage??

Elite specs are supposed to be pure upgrades to the core specializations and side grades to each other. They’ve said that multiple times.

Literally all of the generation 1 elite specs are flat upgrades to core specializations with the exception of scrapper, which is still a flat upgrade to engineer in PvP.

It’s absurd to say the Daredevil is not a direct upgrade to the thief’s evasion capabilities. Or that Berserker isn’t a flat upgrade to a warrior’s damage, condition damage, and ability to pump out burst skills. Or that the Chronomancer isn’t a direct upgrade to mesmer’s team support capabilities and defensive capabilities.

Again, the Elite Specs are supposed to be stronger than core specs. They just aren’t meant to stronger than other elite specs.

None of the deceptions feel all that deceptive. Or useful.

Jaunt is an elite deception but what about it is very deceptive? Thief deceptions aren’t the most well defined of utility types, but the majority of them involve stealth or can be used to stealth. Which makes sense as thieves as a class are all about making someone believe nothing is there when there is. Shadowstep is a deception skill, but it also has the unique feature of blinking you back to your original location if you want. So you can deceive enemies into thinking you’re going one direction, only to retreat back where you originally were There’s a deceptive juke element to it.

Mesmers as a class differ from thieves in that they make enemies think something is there when there isn’t, or making something look like something else entirely. So Mesmer deceptions should be more about that.

Here’s just me throwing out a couple of skill ideas:

Friendliest of Fire: Deceive the enemy target, making all their attacks capable of striking allied targets for 3 seconds. 60 Second Cooldown.

Alliance of Convenience: Deceive the enemy target. The Enemy target treats the Mirage as a friendly target for 3 seconds. The Mirage can still attack the target. 60 Second Cooldown.

Convincing Illusions: All your active illusions apply taunt to their current target for 1 second. 24 second cooldown.

Hall of Mirrors (Elite):

Send out a wave of deceptive energy that makes making up to 5 enemies see all units as the Mirage for 10 seconds. 180 second cooldown.

This is just me spit balling here. But when I think of mesmers deceiving people, that’s the sort of thing I think of. Tricking their enemies. Confusing the enemies. Preventing them from properly picking targets. I think they all sound more fun to play with and fit better with the theme of Mirage. Instead we have 3 sub par shadow steps, an evade and a condition attack.

I would personally scrap the whole lot of Deception abilities and start from scratch.

Alwayshappy.2549:

Zenith.7301:

Curunen.8729:

Maybe I’m seeing things weirdly, but personally found Mirage to be a breeze in open world, much easier and faster than condi chrono – unless they’ve deliberately undertuned the pve mobs’ health in Crystal Oasis compared to similar veterans in say LW3 maps.

Yes it’s still clunky, still needs a lot of fixing and buffs, but the core playstyle flow and damage application felt solid.

From the IH thread:
“Ok this stress test has just confirmed how much I LOVE infinite horizon.

Sod all the other traits, this trait is so much fun to use and synergises really well with burst for my build – ie get some clones out, axe 3, or utility blink then ambush into shatter.

The point is not leaving clones up indefinitely casting ambush – it’s having them all cast one (or two) ambush and straight into F1 or F2. In the case of staff if you position yourself right and with deceptive evasion you can stack a good bit of might.
On axe it’s better to ambush in close range after axe 3 then shatter.

Cooldowns are such you can get a good cadence going in terms of ambush into shatter into melee with things like axe 2, back into staff and repeat.

Either way it’s chewing through the large pve mobs like butter, better than chrono because both axe and staff cleave everything and I don’t even have the right stats to make use of things like sharper images or precision for more direct damage crit (I want to go viper for hybrid but the demo gear was carrion).

Also I find it surprising how much the evade sharing keeps illusions alive in order to shatter.

There’s a lot of issues to be fixed, but infinite horizon must be in game – either basline for the class or as it is now, because it is so much fun to use. I think if it didn’t exist I’d rather play chrono."

The mobs are undertuned. They also nerfed the hounds in the story step from the last build.

More importantly, mesmer has never had issues in open world because illusions often take aggro, drawing the burst skills/cc from mobs onto them instead of you.

Where did you read that? I simply read they already made some changes to the elite specs/maps, but that this stress test wouldn’t show those changes yet. It would be 100% like the previous two preview weekends…

Anyway…I’m not a main Mesmer, but I kinda liked mirage in pvp and I never really agreed with all of the hate, even winning several 1vs3’s, current meta builds included. I wanted to check it in PvE aswell, since I spent most of my time there. kitten , I felt strong. So mobile. So much AoE condi damage, it was insane. At times it still felt clunky and I agree some minor tweaks could improve the situation a bit, but it’s no way as kittenome people call it out to be. There’s a learning curve for everything, which goes for nearly everything.

Normal mobs in the demo areas have around 8-9k health. This is compared to the 15-30k you’d see in everywhere else. They’re much weaker than traditional mobs even in the base game let alone HoT.

OriOri.8724:

mortrialus.3062:

Cyninja.2954:

No one is saying mirage should never ever shatter.

… Almost everyone who commented on Infinite Horizon want it baseline because they’re convinced that it makes ambush attacks stronger

Oh jesus christ. It DOES make ambush attacks stronger. This is a fact. Clones add more physical damage, regardless of how little, and they deal more stacks of conditions. You cannot rationally say that IH does not make ambush attacks better if you have clones out. You literally cannot rationally argue that.

You can argue that it doesn’t make enough of a difference to be worth it, because that is certainly something most people agree with. But you can’t seriously be arguing that it doesn’t make ambush attacks with clones stronger.

This thread is over, you’re nothing more than a troll.

Clones do so little physical damage as to be almost nothing. Dune Cloak increases the damage of Scepter, Staff and Axe ambush more than Infinite Horizon on bleeding targets.

And that doesn’t even cover having three Illusory Duelists out. For condition damage ambushes, a 0 clone ambush with Dune Cloak on a bleeding target results in more damage than a 3 Clone Ambush attack with Infinite Horizon.

But apparently math is trolling.

Cyninja.2954:

No one is saying mirage should never ever shatter.

Have you seen the trait feedback thread or the various feedback threads on reddit? Because most people absolutely are. Almost everyone who commented on Infinite Horizon want it baseline because they’re convinced that it makes ambush attacks stronger, and that they think Mirage gameplay is supposed to be about setting up clones and having those clones do damage with Ambush attacks, even though clone ambush attacks are explicitly stated to not be about increasing your damage.

Most people who played the Mirage and commented in the trait feedback thread and the reddit feedback thread walked away thinking that phantasms and shatters are useless on it, and that it’s supposed to use clone ambushes for damage because of Infinite Horizon. That most people walked away thinking that is a problem.

My argument isn’t that Mirage is good. It’s not.

My argument isn’t that Mirage is an effective shatter build or better at shatter than Chronomancer. Because it’s not (Chronomancer is better at almost everything than Mirage).

My argument is that among the the many reworks Mirage needs, Removing Infinite Horizon should be one of them because most people walked away from Mirage thinking it isn’t supposed to use phantasms, or ever shatter, and that it’s about Clone DPS.

Cyninja.2954:

People are saying that the way the traits and the spec are designed, shattering is counterproductive.

You’re not wrong that shattering is often counter productive on Mirage (Playing Mirage in it’s entirety is counter productive). But there are multiple traits that are designed to make your shatters a key part of Mirage and the Ambush Attack playstyle by increasing access to Ambush Attacks. I’m not saying that makes it good, or that Chronomancer isn’t leagues better at running shatter builds.

Cyninja.2954:

You have failed so far in providing ample evidence to the contrary or even make a solid argument how chronomancer is less of a shatter spec than mirage.

That was never my argument. I also never said Chronomancer doesn’t use Shatters. Condi Chrono is the best PvP build and it is a pure shatter build that’s strong just because of the Chronophantasma trait.

But that’s not the only reason it’s strong. Part of why it’s strong is because Echo of Memory is one of the the best defensive skills in the game and also because continuum split is in theory and sometimes practice the strongest effective heal in the game. Both of which absolutely are major defensive components to the elite specializaton.

In PvE, Continuum Split is a key part of the chronomancer’s rotation. But that is expressly in the pursuit of pumping out as much quickness and alacrity to the group as possible, sometimes for shortening the cooldown of Moa. Occasionally it’ll use Diversion for more Breakbar damage in a pinch. I don’t know whether that crosses the threshold dividing Not Shatter Spec and Shatter Spec. I think you’ve gotten too hung up on that term and it’s purpose in my argument.

Again:

My argument isn’t that Mirage is good. It’s not good at all.

My argument isn’t that Mirage is better at shatter than Chronomancer or that it is even an effective shatter build or. Because it’s not (Chronomancer is better at almost everything than Mirage).

My argument is that among the the many reworks Mirage needs, Removing Infinite Horizon should be one of them because most people, just in terms of raw numbers from the feedback threads, walked away from Mirage thinking it isn’t supposed to use phantasms, or ever shatter, and that it’s about Clone DPS through Infinite Horizon.

How about responding to my actual argument next time?

Playing Mirage is enough of a stress test on it’s own. I’m hilarious.

OriOri.8724:

Loony.3714:

mortrialus.3062:

Saying Chronomancer is THE shatter spec and nothing else is nonsense. I never said ambush skills aren’t supposed to be what Mirage bring to the table and be good at. I just said it’s supposed to shatter. Yeah, Mirage has clone generation in it’s traits as well. The problem is that Deception Skills are really bad so it’s clone generation pales in comparison to Chronomancer’s Chronophantasia.

Wait I’m confused if three traits make Mirage a shatter spec then what Chronomancer’s:

Continuum Split: A whole new shatter
Time Catches Up: Super speed on illusions
Illusionary Reversion: Shatter skills generate a clone if you have enough illusions present.
Chronophantasma: Phantasms are resummoned after a shatter
Seize the Moment: Shatter grants quickness

By my count thats 4 traits and one additional shatter. So by your logic that makes it more of a shatter spec than Mirage. And in your words: “Chronomancer is a defense and support specialization”

So can you clarify why three traits make Mirage a shatter spec while chrono’s 4 traits and new shatter make it defense and support?

Of course he can’t, because mirage is anything but a shatter spec. Of those 3 traits OP is using as his “argument”, one of them buffs our ambush attacks, another one is a mirage mirror generation trait (so its more related to ambush attacks than it is to shatters), and the other one doesn’t fit thematically with shatters and needs to be reworked.

Mirage centers around mirage cloak and ambush attacks, it has

6 traits related to mirage cloak
3 traits tied to ambush attacks, along with a fourth that helps us gain access to ambush attacks via granting vigor

The best argument OP can come up with involves a maximum of 3 traits, of which 2 of them buff the kittening ambush attacks instead of buffing shatters. Yet we solidly have 6 traits for mirage cloak, and 3 traits that are actually tied to buffing ambush attacks.

Its pretty kittening clear that this is not a shatter spec, but is indeed designed around mirage cloak and ambush attacks. I mean hell, you literally can’t have a GM trait that doesn’t improve your mirage cloak gained from dodging. Every single one, including the minor, buffs either mirage cloak itself (including that gained from mirrors), or buffs dodging, which grants mirage cloak).

I never said Ambush Attacks and Mirage Cloak are not the central focus of Mirage. I’m trying to point out that Infinite Horizon has everyone falsely convinced that the design of Mirage involves; Never ever shattering, Only ever using clones and using Infinite Horizon to maximize Ambush Attack Damage (Which Infinite Horizon explicitly does not do). I’m pointing out that mathematically speaking, Dune Cloak is a better skill if your goal is to try and get as much damage out of Ambush Skills as possible (At least the Scepter and Staff ones) because clones have deliberately nerfed and condition damage and that even in the best possible scenario Infinite Horizon is worse.

OriOri.8724:

No, it isn’t. Stop trying to convince people this is true, because its as far from the truth as we can get. Chrono is the shatter elite spec we got, that’s why it had so much illusion generation tied to 2 traits, on top of alacrity to get our shatters (and illusions) up faster, on top of giving superspeed to shatters. Chrono is the shatter spec. Mirage is not.

Chronomancer is a defense and support specialization. That yes, provides some utility to our class mechanic shattering. Just like Mirage is primarily a condition duelist and skirmisher, that provides some utility to our class mechanic.

Also I’m not sure if you know this, but Alacrity doesn’t just work on shatters. It works on everything for everyone. You know, the whole defensive support spec thing. You seem really confused about that.

Saying Chronomancer is THE shatter spec and nothing else is nonsense. I never said ambush skills aren’t supposed to be what Mirage bring to the table and be good at. I just said it’s supposed to shatter. Yeah, Mirage has clone generation in it’s traits as well. The problem is that Deception Skills are really bad so it’s clone generation pales in comparison to Chronomancer’s Chronophantasia.

OriOri.8724:

There is nothing, literally nothing, in the trait line that says its a shatter spec. Nothing. Your “evidence” consists of 3 traits, all of which are meant to minimize the harm that shatters do to yourself (in terms of losing DPS and both losing the deception part of the spec).

“There is literally nothing that says Mirage is suppose to shatter except that there are three times as many traits designed to interact with and provide utility to shatters as there are for that one trait that has your clones copy your ambush skills that explicitly says to not do much damage or condition damage. NOTHING.”

OriOri.8724:

Riddle of sand directly buffs your ambushes, not your shatters. The reason it refreshes when shattering is to help offset the cost of losing all of your clones when you shatter (hence, losing the extra stacks of conditions).

It improves your ambushes. And it makes your shatters buff your ambushes. Yes. It’s badly undertuned. But the design that shatters and ambush skills are supposed to compliment each other is clearly there.

OriOri.8724:

Even then, its not even that strong. Its just 2 stacks of confusion, which a single clone performing a staff or scepter ambush will do more damage, much less having 3 of them.

For literally 2 seconds of confusion equaling less than 44 condition damage per stack. Dune Cloak’s 20% condition duration on bleeding targets results in far more damage. That is math. That is a fact.

If you’re goal is to buff your ambush damage you don’t want Infinite Horizon. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. That doesn’t even account for things like having Phantasmal Duelists out for sustained damage and a Master of Fragmentation boosted Cry of Frustration.

That’s what I’m trying to explain to everyone. Infinite Horizon is a red herring.

Mirage isn’t good. But Infinite Horizon is not only bad it’s actively misleading people into thinking Mirage is a spec that does damage by using clones that basically don’t do damage to somehow do damage with their attacks that basically don’t do damage.

OriOri.8724:

Nomad’s endurance again doesn’t buff your shatters. Its just that ANet didn’t want a spec that had zero interaction with shatters. Vigor on shatter doesn’t even make sense, it should be vigor after a dodge to fit with the theme of the attack (or vigor after landing an ambush attack).

It doesn’t “buff” shatters directly. But if buffs you when you perform shatters, allowing you to perform more ambush attacks. And it gives you increased condition damage after you shatter. Because shatters and ambush attacks are supposed to compliment each other.

OriOri.8724:

Shards of Glass, again doesn’t buff your shatters at all. It just gives us a chance at another mirage mirror. And since shattering destroys your clones, the “deception” this class has vanishes after a shatter, so giving us a mirror is a weak way to give us some sort of defense for losing the deception. This is even more evident since deception and confusing enemies seems to be the primary defense of this spec according to the theme (practically they don’t work that well).

OriOri.8724:

Mirage is anything but a shatter spec. Sorry to be so blunt, but you really couldn’t be more wrong about it. The reason you keep grasping at straws here is because its so bad at what its supposed to do. Which is deceive enemies via clones, and performing ambush attacks. Honestly, if you think ambush attacks aren’t supposed to be a large part of this class then it wouldn’t have put in mirrors as an alternative mechanic to access them.

Mirage is NOT a shatter spec.

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

I think getting on WP’s case for not spitting venom at the Mirage is a bit much. And this is coming from one of it’s biggest critics.

We’re talking about a guy who made a video showing off a healing support reaper spec for fun. He’s not the type of person to get supper into balance, metagame and game feel and is more interested in finding weird interesting build cominations.

Not made baseline. Not combined with another trait. Removed.

Mirage has it’s fair share of problems. I’ve detailed them in the feedback threads and on reddit. But I think one of the most problematic aspects is that people don’t know what the elite specialization is supposed to do and Infinite Horizon is a big part of that.

For those that don’t know, Infinite Horizon is a Mirage Trait that applies Mirage Cloak to your clones when you personally gain Mirage Cloak. This means that they will use an ambush attack instead of Auto Attack.

This trait has many things very appealing to it on the surface level. I think primarily it’s because it’s the only fun really unique spell and mechanic new to Mirage. It’s satisfying to see all your clones using ambush attacks in unison in a way nothing else on the Mirage is.

Unfortunately, being fun and interesting does not mean good. Clones do almost no direct damage. The condition duration from clone Ambush Attacks is drastically reduced so even from a condition perspective it doesn’t actually end up being that much damage. It’s not meant to be a trait that improves the damage on your ambush attacks. It’s there to help with the “deception” aspect of the class.

The end result is that you have tons of people convinced that the Mirage is supposed to use clones to do damaged instead of using phantasms of shatters, even though from both a defensive and offensive angle clones can’t actually do that. If you want a grandmaster that does increases your damage, the 20% increased condition duration on bleeding targets from Dune Cloak is huge and far, far more of a DPS boost than Infinite Horizon.

Mirage is clearly supposed to be a shatter spec. Let’s look at some more of the traits:

Riddle of Sand: When entering combat, your first Ambush attack applies confusion. This ability refreshes when you use a Shatter skill. (Major Adept)

Nomad’s Endurance: Shatter skills give vigor, which grants Condition damage. (Minor Master)

Shards of Glass: Shattered Illusions have a chance of becoming Mirage Mirrors. (Major Master)

My suggestion is that Infinite Horizon should be replaced with something like this:

“Infinite Horizon: Clone and Phantasm Skills summon now summon an Additional Clone or Phantasm of the same type. (10 Second Internal Cooldown”

Not only would this be a fun trait, it would be a good trait that plays into Mirage and Mesmer’s mechanic of shattering. It would also provide a unique bandaid towards Mirage being really starved for shatter ammo compared to Chronomancer in a way unique to this particular subclass. And it would be good for both power and condition mesmers.

Once we’ve given Mirage a more focused, less confusing design by removing Infinite Horizon we can focus on solving it’s other issues like how bad ambush skills are across the board, and how Mirage is expected to use dodge rolls offensively like a daredevil but doesn’t have the endurance regeneration to make that playstyle work, and how Mirage Mirrors are a poor concept.

Mastering focus is one of the signs of a great mesmer. It’s an incredible weapon, especially in PvE.

Mirage is weak because it’s a build that is supposed to spam dodge like a daredevil but doesn’t have the endurance regeneration to make that possible. Also the skills you get for using dodge are all terrible. It’s as simple as that.

Xstein.2187:

I actually love the idea of a trait that doubles how many clones and phantasms you summon. However, both might be a little too powerful. Perhaps with the short time span left till the expansion they could pull something together with phantasms though, maybe deriving a trait from the mechanics of signet of ether.

I mean is it really that much more powerful than Chronomancer’s Chronophantasma? Mirage definitely needs something to ramp up clone generation. It’s just different flavor of getting twice the phantasms.

Okay the burst potential of having both phantasms attack at the same time could be problematic but you could spawn the 2nd phantasm with daze to stagger out their attacks to be lest bursty. And put an internal cooldown on it. But it really won’t be that problematic with a 10 second icd.

TheOneWhoSighs.7513:

Fay.2357:

Durzlla.6295:

Literally my only complaints with Mirage are that mirrors don’t persist long enough in the world, and that infinite horizon feels mandatory.

Idk why so many of you seem to be under the impression Mirage is just completely worthless and unusable, it seemed very solid to me, just different due to the dodge mechanic.

The problems with mirage:

• All ambush skills except for sword are utterly abysmal.
• The mirror mechanic is fundamentally flawed. Who wants to go chasing their dodges around the map? Nobody, that’s who.
• The axe skills are weak, buggy, and clunky
• The deception utilities are largely weak and clunky
• At least 1 trait at every level is utter garbage

Funnily enough, these complaints are extremely similar to base mesmer complaints.

Most of our utilities are weak or clunky. Everything outside of sword & GS is weak/buggy/clunky.
The illusion & shatter mechanic is fundamentally flawed, who wants to try and maintain any number of illusions when they can be killed in less than a second preventing the damage from shatter mechanics to land in full.

Oh, and at least one trait out of pretty much every level of every spec is useless.

I feel like you could probably expand these complaints past mesmer at this point. A lot of classes have clunky/useless B.S.

We’d have a lot more variety if they fixed the base classes.

I don’t agree with this at all.

Mesmer has problems, but they’re generally different than Mirage’s problems and the strength of their utilities skills is definitely not one of them. Honestly, Chronomancer is in an excellent place in PvE and PvP. If there’s something we’re really lacking it’s a dedicated sustained high damage spec that could put out 34k+ DPS. It would be great if we had something like condition rangers. Druids are mandatory, but if you already have a druid a DPS condition ranger is a great addition to a group. It should be the same with Chronomancer and Mirage.

Shattering is not a fundamentally poor mechanic. The problem with shattering as a mechanic is that getting out your damaging phantasms in a long scale encounter is such a long ramping process that shattering them only hurts your overall dps. It works as excellent burst. Phantasm generation is the problem. Chronomancer managed to bandaid that problem with Chronophantamsa and Illusory Revision. It’s why I posted suggested in a different thread that Infinite Horizon should be removed (Clones ambushing is actually terrible, Mirage is otherwise clearly meant to shatter, it’s confusing to players, and adds far less damage than the 20% condition duration on bleeding targets trait) with a trait that doubles how many clones and phantasms your abilities summon, giving Mirage similar, unique style of clone generation to Chronomancer and allowing shatters to shine on Mirage. It’s another bandaid but a bandaid is better than bleeding out.

Mesmers should have a DPS specialization that allows them to bring great damage to the raid in addition to their existing utility while also allowing for a more dynamic playstyle than “Set up three phantasms. Occassiona 2 if you’re power or 3 if you’re condi.” That was one of the things I was hoping Mirage would bring to the table.

Staff is great. It does it’s job perfectly in PvP. Scepter could use more damage but it’s by no means clunky or buggy and can do some powerful burst. All of our offhand weapons are great and have a use and place somewhere.

Mirage tries to bring new things to the core mesmer playstyle and all of it is poorly executed. It doesn’t bring that much damage to the table compared to core mesmer. It shares core mesmer’s poor phantasm generation. And in terms of unique things it brings Mirage Cloak is straight up worse than dodge rolling. It’s an elite specialization that demands that we’re constantly spending endurance, while neither giving us the third dodge bar or the endurance regeneration to do that like Daredevil, and all of the ambush skill are severely undertunned given that they cost you either a utility slot or a dodge roll. They are also difficult to hit with because of things like poor tracking.

Curunen.8729:

mortrialus.3062:

Axe auto attack feel a bit weightless animation and flavor wise. Axes are more brutal and inelegant weapons compared to more precise swords. It shouldn’t feel as brutal and heavy as Warrior axe auto attack, but it should feel a bit closer than it currently is.

Just on this note while it is personal preference, I like the elegant and ethereal nature of the axe auto attack chain and feel it fits the theme of Mirage nicely, as well as inspiration from the desert location and parallels with the whole veiled exotic mystery from similar cultures as those portrayed in the crystal desert. If anything I’d like to see the first two strikes of the auto chain to be a fraction faster.

I can see that working. If they go with the more elegant, ethereal style, I wouldn’t mind seeing a magical Firebrand style component to the axe animations.

The easiest (And most boring) way to give Mirage a place would be to make sure it can consistently put out 34k damage per second while being able to bring the kind of utility core mesmer can bring. That would ensure that it’s a solid DPS option in groups where there is already a Chronomancer, making it the equivalent to current condi ranger.

And while Mirage should be a good condition damage spec, there are so many mechanically problems with the Mirage that I can’t see them getting fixed in the less than month we have to release.

Tempest was poorly received when players first got their hands on it, but there was a lot of time for Arenanet to tweak various aspects of it. We don’t have the time for that with Mirage, especially considering just how badly thought out a lot of Mirage is.

Mirrors are just not a good mechanic at all. Deception skills are all underwhelming. Ambush skills are mostly terrible and even Scepter, the one good one, isn’t as strong as it needs to be and has serious problems. Mirage is a dodge spam specialization like Daredevil without the third dodge bar or insane endurance regeneration that Daredevil has access to. It barely has access to vigor.

Infinite Horizon is a red herring and is confusing players as to the Mirage’s roll (Mirage is very much about shatters). Clone ambushes do very low damage and don’t even compare to Dune Cloak’s 20% increased condition duration on bleeding targets, aka all targets. A lot of people want Infinite Horizon baseline, but actually it needs to be removed and have the player’s ambush attack actually be worth a kitten . And replaced with a good trait.

Mirage can’t even evade away from opponents properly without wasting invincibility frames.

There is a lot of problems with the Mirage, some of which are problems with core mesmer that were bandaided over with Chronomancer like how difficult shatters can be to land in PvP without Time Catches Up. It’s a lot of work to be done and to be honest they might already consider Mirage to be in a good place and not thinking about a serious rework.

Axe auto attack feel a bit weightless animation and flavor wise. Axes are more brutal and inelegant weapons compared to more precise swords. It shouldn’t feel as brutal and heavy as Warrior axe auto attack, but it should feel a bit closer than it currently is.

Axe 2 and 3 are cool and feel fun to use. The lack of defensive skills on the axe leaves it feeling vulnerable. This is most noticeable with the 2 skill which while fun and well animated leaves you wide open. Axe 3 is a godsend. I honestly wish this skill was just the class’s new F5 ability. The ammo on the Axe 2 is greatly appreciated and I wish that other clone generating skills on the sword, staff, and greatsword.

Mirage Cloak and ambush skills are immensely underwhelming. First of all it’s very hard to tell exactly when the invincibility frames for Mirage Cloak are active in the heat of the moment. Mirage cloak should give your character a a move obvious tell for the evade frames, like giving your a purple shroud exactly when it’s happening..

Second, Mirage Cloak prevents you from being able to evade to the side or away from where you are facing without wasting invincibility frames doing an about face, running away, and doing another about face to reface your opponent. Mirage Cloak is supposed to be the defining characteristic of the Mirage. It should be a better evade in every way. Mirage Cloak either needs to allow you to strafe / backpedal at full super speed or the entire thing should be tweaked to have you instantly shadowstep the distance of the evade if you were using a movement speed.

Also, if the class mechanic is going to be a new type of evade it absolutely should have longer evade frames so that you’re actually gaining something potentially powerful and useful. It’s currently .75 seconds, the same time as a standard dodge roll. I think it should be bumped up to 1.25 seconds of invincibility frames to make it compatible to Daredevil’s third dodge roll.

Next up, the window to use Ambush Skills should not only be longer by several seconds but should be spread out with other skills. Any mesmer skill that gives blur, distortion or stealth should open up the ambush attack window as well. Endurance is an extremely important defense resource that cannot be understated for how important it is. It is far too important of a resource to be worth spending on the current Mirage Skills. As it stands now, Mirage Ambush Attacks need to be either immense high damage blow outs if they’re only tied to Mirage Cloak and shattering Mirrors.

Daredevil dodges are a great comparison again. They got a pick of three dodges all of which are important to different unique play styles. One of which turns the dodge into a condition attack and increases condition damage, another is a 4k crit that increases power damage, another breaks all slows and mobilizes, grants swiftness, reduces incoming damage, has increased ranged for the dodge (And Invincibility frames I think? Not 100% certain on this.) and grants them swiftness. And they have three dodge rolls so that using one of these for the bonus isn’t so painful.

Next up are the ambush skills which are all have serious problems, are all really awkward to use, and almost all of them are hot garbage. Compare to a thief’s ambush skills; Thieves gain ambush skills while stealthed. So they’re already less vulnerable trying to execute them. In addition, the attacks themselves are super quick. Bam! Backstabbed. Bam! Knocked down.

Mirage ambush skills are all really weak and leave you way too open to attack while using them, especially considering they cost a dodge roll or a utility skill to use. Mirage ambushes leave you extremely vulnerable the entire time. The scepter and sword having blur evasion is a no brainer. I also still don’t understand why scepter has to root you. The shadow step away from the target is really awkward and often times blinks me out of range. This is probably a “get good” issue, but it also seems really problematic in PvE where you want to stack with the group. It would make more sense if it blinked you away after you performed the attack, not before. Scepter projectiles have terrible tracking and have a difficult time hitting moving opponents.

Sword ambush is boring and uninspired. You just do the same attack your sword phantasms do but for basically no damage and barely any daze. This should be a really big, meaty attack and probably shadow step you to your target in keeping with the Mirage theme, more or less a mesmer equivalent to the guardian’s Symbol of Blades.

Staff has this loooong wind up before shooting a mediocre but impressive looking projectile. With the wind up it seems like its begging for block while you’re spinning the staff. The conditions on this need to be increased quite a bit. Also the projectile tracking is again terrible. If you enemy is circle strafing around you it will never hit them. I do really like the feel and the flavor of this one in particular. If the issues were solved, I would really love this attack.

Axe barely feels like you’ve done something different from your auto attack. I don’t know about the damage numbers for this in particular, that’s not really what I’m concerned with. Just in terms of feel, you should feel like you’ve done something really different and more impact than your standard auto attack.

Greatsword has terrible damage and is interrupted by the fact that the attack lasts longer than the mirage cloak. So you’ll stop doing the attack before the attack has even finished and go back to the standard greatsword auto. It’s also begging for projectile reflection or destruction.

With how Mirage Cloak is a complete downgrade from standard dodge rolling, and how weak Ambush skills are, the big selling point of the Mirage is fundamentally bad. I can’t imagine it having any place in any game mode. Picking Mirage requires giving up so much for so, so little that it’s not worth taking.

Self Deception: Overall a solid concept for a trait. But the tuning is very low especially considering it has to compete with Chronophantasma and Illusionary Reversion from the Chronomancer. Overall clone / phantasm output needs to be increased substantially. You can say “Grandmaster vs Not Grandmaster” to justify the lower tuning for Self Deception but the end cumulative result of the trait lines ends up with Mirage feeling starved for shatter ammo.

Also compare with the Daredevil equivalent, which makes it grant 10 endurance every time they use a physical skill.

Renewing Oasis: It seems alright. It’s very passive and not very interesting. I have very little to say about this.

Riddle of Sand: Interesting, but very very undertuned. This is general proof leading to the fact that Mirage is designed as a shatter spec. Which is interesting as Infinite Horizon feels like it’s telling you the opposite, that you aren’t supposed to use Shatters or Phantasms but clones. We’ll get more into this later.

Nomad’s Endurance: More evidence that this is supposed to be a Shatter spec. It’s okay, but considering Mirage greatly parallels the Daredevil and just how much that class as access to not just Vigor but raw endurance generation through it’s healskill and various traits that it just doesn’t compete. Daredevil is loaded with getting tons of free endurance and Mirage has basically nothing and only a few sources of vigor thanks to this trait. Overall very underwhelming.

Shards of Glass: Mirage mirrors are an awkward mechanic that just doesn’t work, especially in pvp. It’s just not worth hiking your way over to this tiny thing on the ground for a tiny bit of evade. The entire concept needs to be reworked. Perhaps something where you gain mirage mirror on yourself and the next time you’re attacked it activates. Almost like a Mirage style Aegis. The tool type is confusing and it feels like it should have a 100% chance of spawning a mirror if you use a three clone shatter. Again, it’s just one more trait poorly performing compared to Chronomancer that leads to Mirage feeling really starved for Shatter ammo.

Mirage Mantle: Okay despite being too passive.

Mirrored Axes: 0 complaints.

Speed of Sand: Should not only be baseline, but said baseline needs to remove the problem of being unable to evade properly in 50% of possible directions.

Infinite Horizon: A lot of people are clamoring for this trait to be made baseline. I 100% disagree with this. Between Shards of Glass, Riddle of Sand and Nomad’s Endurance Mirage is clearly supposed to be a shatter spec. Especially since everything else about the Mesmer is built for Shatters. It’s not supposed to to have it’s basic clones out there doing damage by copying the Mesmer’s attacks and so many people have come to that conclusion.

I think this trait should be replaced by a new trait: Every time you summon a clone or phantasm you summon and additional version of that clone or phantasm. That would eliminate the confusion over what the mirage is supposed to do. It would also solve it’s problem with being starved for clones and phantasms compared to the Chronomancer and pave the way for it being a great spec for shatters.

Not only that, but it could potentially create a more active PvE damage spec as now DPS mesmers can potentially shatter for additional damage and quickly get their phantasms out again instead of just setting up and never touching the shatter button.

Elusive Mind: This is a heavily underrated trait. It’s quite possibly the best thing the Mirage gets. If Mirage Cloak’s issue with reducing your mobility and the Mesmer and Mirage’s lack of vigor and Endurance generation were fixed this would be an incredible trait in PvP and WvW.

Dune Cloak: Potentially good trait but the 20 second internal cooldown on this is ridiculous, especially since with so little vigor and endurance generation it’s not like Mirages are popping Mirage Cloak nonstop. The condition duration increase is really powerful though and in fact much better than Infinite Horizon.

TLDR: Mirage Cloak limits you just as much as it helps you. All of the Mirage Skills are far, far too weak considering they require a bar of endurance or a utility skill to use. Mirage does not have the clone/phantasm generation to compete with Chronomancer. Mirage and core mesmer lack vigor and endurance generation to allow for a play style that demands spending endurance for offense. Infinite Horizon while a fun and interesting trait seems to have caused a lot of confusion about what the Mirage is supposed to do as a class.

Mirage Cloak: Mirage Cloak and ambush skills are immensely underwhelming. First of all it’s very hard to tell exactly when the invincibility frames for Mirage Cloak are active in the heat of the moment. Mirage cloak should give your character a a move obvious tell for the evade frames.

Second, Mirage Cloak prevents you from being able to evade to the side or away from where you are facing without wasting invincibility frames doing an about face, running away, and doing another about face to reface your opponent. Mirage Cloak is supposed to be the defining characteristic of the Mirage. It should be a better evade in every way. Mirage Cloak either needs to allow you to strafe / backpedal at full super speed or the entire thing should be tweaked to have you instantly shadowstep the distance of the evade if you were using a movement speed.

Also, if the class mechanic is going to be a new type of evade it absolutely should have longer evade frames so that you’re actually gaining something potentially powerful and useful. It’s currently .75 seconds, the same time as a standard dodge roll. I think it should be bumped up to 1.25 seconds of invincibility frames to make it compatible to Daredevil’s third dodge roll.

Next up, the window to use Ambush Skills should not only be longer by several seconds but should be spread out with other skills. Any mesmer skill that gives blur, distortion or stealth should open up the ambush attack window as well. Endurance is an extremely important defense resource that cannot be understated for how important it is. It is far too important of a resource to be worth spending on the current Mirage Skills. As it stands now, Mirage Ambush Attacks need to be either immense high damage blow outs if they’re only tied to Mirage Cloak and shattering Mirrors. Like condition damage equivalent to the Deadeye’s insane crits for how much they cost and what you give up to use them.

Daredevil dodges are a great comparison again. They got a pick of three dodges all of which are important to different unique play styles. One of which turns the dodge into a condition attack and increases condition damage, another is a 4k crit that increases power damage, another breaks all slows and mobilizes, grants swiftness, reduces incoming damage, has increased ranged for the dodge (And Invincibility frames I think? Not 100% certain on this.) and grants them swiftness. And they have three dodge rolls so that using one of these for the bonus isn’t so painful.

Next up are the ambush skills which are all have serious problems, are all really awkward to use, and almost all of them are hot garbage. Compare to a thief’s ambush skills; Thieves gain ambush skills while stealthed. So they’re already less vulnerable trying to execute them. In addition, the attacks themselves are super quick. Bam! Backstabbed. Bam! Knocked down.

Mirage ambush skills are all really weak and leave you way too open to attack while using them, especially considering they cost a dodge roll to use or a utility skill. Mirage ambushes leave you extremely vulnerable the entire time. The scepter and sword having blur evasion is a no brainer. I also still don’t understand why scepter has to root you. The shadow step away from the target is really awkward and often times blinks me out of range. This is probably a “get good” issue, but it also seems really problematic in PvE where you want to stack with the group. It would make more sense if it blinked you away after you performed the attack, not before. Scepter projectiles have terrible tracking and have a difficult time hitting moving opponents.

Sword ambush is boring and uninspired. You just do the same attack your sword phantasms do but for basically no damage and barely any daze. This should be a really big, meaty attack and probably shadow step you to your target in keeping with the Mirage theme.

Staff has this loooong wind up before shooting a mediocre but impressive looking projectile. With the wind up it seems like its begging for block while you’re spinning the staff. The conditions on this need to be increased quite a bit. Also the projectile tracking is again terrible. If you enemy is circle strafing around you it will never hit them.

Axe barely feels like you’ve done something different from your auto attack.

Greatsword has terrible damage and is interrupted by the fact that the attack lasts longer than the mirage cloak. So you’ll stop doing the attack before the attack has even finished and go back to the standard greatsword auto. It’s also begging for projectile reflection or destruction.

With how Mirage Cloak is a complete downgrade from standard dodge rolling, and how weak Ambush skills are, the big selling point of the Mirage is fundamentally bad. I can’t imagine it having any place in any game mode. Picking Mirage requires giving up so much for so, so little that it’s not worth taking.

My account’s email address is invalid and I need to chance my GW1 account name so I can link my accoun.t There isn’t any option to change the email in account management.

I recently bought GW1 to get some of the Hall of Monument items. However the game won’t let me link my accounts. The error says “The Guild Wars account information you entered is either incorrect, does not exist, or is already linked with another Guild Wars 2 Account. Please try again.”

I am putting the information in correctly. There’s no way the account should be linked to another GW2 account.

He’s a thief. He uses shadowstep and pistol whip in the fight with him.

The memser skills you see are because he’s always flanked by a mesmer in every encounter with him.

While Meteor Shower and Elementalist DPS needed a nerf, I feel the Meteor Shower change was particularly wrong headed. It would have been much better to see the overall damage get shaved a bit rather than add an internal cooldown on meteor strikes. It completely kills the flavor of the ability, which was already reliant on RNG. Not only that, but quickness actually reduces Meteor Shower’s damage, because now all that does is ensure that more of your meteors are landing during the cooldown.

I feel a big part of what made this skill fun and flavorful was that while it was RNG dependent, there were situations that it shined in and ways to reduce the RNG. If you’re summoning a Meteor Shower, it just makes sense that larger objects should get hit by them more. And was always the ability to focus the storms area by using terrain and walls carefully.

We’ve seen the numbers. Staff ele in PVE is now the lowest damage option in all circumstances, even on enemies with large hitboxes. Maybe Scepter / Dagger should be more effective on smaller enemies. I can see the reasoning for that. But now staff doesn’t have a place in raids anymore, which is a bit sad.

While I feel the nerf needed to happen, I don’t think adding an internal cooldown was all that wise and thought out.

The Green Glowing Mask. It’s absolutely integral to one of my character’s looks and it hasn’t been on the gem store for months while both the blue and red variants were.

Wizard hat is also cool.

My bank account is ready.

There is no reason Super Adventure Box shouldn’t just be permanent content at this point unless they’re actually committed to making it a yearly festival which they clearly aren’t. They’re too attached to the Living World Season 1 mindset, which was never a great mindset to begin with.

It would make so many people happy if we had something like Super Adventure Box to tide us over until Heart of Thorns finally comes out. They don’t even need to update it. I don’t really get to play it when it came out and am dying for a chance to really get into it again.

I like that the chain whip sword has is a straight sword for some abilities and a whip for others. It makes sense that it’s a straight sword for stabs like Savage Leap and Final Thrust and that it becomes a whip for Flurry. But I really hate that it’s floppy when sheathed and that the chain is bright neon green of all things. If it had a normal looking chain and was a straight sword when sheathed it’d be perfect.

Is this for SPvP? If that’s the case, this is probably the best build for GS/Hammer in PvP:

http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Warrior_-_Juggernaut_

It’s more or less Hambow with a handful of changes to make it more bursty. It has it’s obvious counters but it’s a lot of fun to use.

In general:

Greatsword is all about burst. You want a Berserker’s Trinket and Hoelbrak runes which give you a good mix of damage and incoming condition duration reduction.

Epidemix Revenge.4862:

Another god Kitten day of 4v5s….3 of them so far and I am unlucky enough to have been on the “4” end each time.

How hard is it?? How KITTEN hard is it to make the ALREADY EXISTING “I am ready” button a mandatory click for all 10 to start play? If one misses it immediately pull in another player and give them 30 secs to prep and then go? There!!! Problem solved!! Solo Q has one less chuckle against it when people laugh at the ladder instead of taking it seriously.

Please tell me why this cant be implemented?? It looks like the structure is ALREADY THERE FFS!!!Why is the I AM READY button THERE IF NOT FOR THIS REASON???

Oh and get skyhammer off of the queue(not a skyhammer thread pls don’t infract me again)

A thousand times yet. The game should not be allowed to begin if one team is outnumbered. Period. End of story.

Anyway you slice it, the price on precursors has reached insane levels. I started seriously working on getting a precursor a couple of weeks ago. I’m making about 50-70g a day. And I can’t even keep up with inflation on these things anymore. When I started, the precursor I wanted was 800g. And it’s been rapidly rising. Just in the past few hours, we’ve had a 200g jump in price on the thing from the already inflated price of 1,100g to 1,300g. I’ve been working on on this for weeks, spending 100% of my time in game just working on making money, diligently saving, never buying anything.

It’s not even so much that it’s expensive. It was expensive when I started. It’s that it’s a constantly shifting goal post and it’s out running me. Two days ago, I was at 800g and was only 200g away from it. Now I’m at 900g and I’m 400g away from it. I’m just really frustrated by this. Like what am I supposed to do? I can farm 1,000 gold. I can farm 2,000 gold. But I can’t farm 200g per hour.

I also have a question. I hit replay and I didn’t really mean to replay chapter 2. Is there any way to quit it so its not clogging up may UI and my maps?

I beat her last time and fought and killed her again this time after a couple tries. Not going to lie, I noticed a few times when a Vision of Death would spawn a ways away from me and immediately blowup and kill me.

Overall they made the fight much easier, and they mostly did so by removing a lot of the bullkitten that was originally in the fight like the glass dome causing camera problems, and the thin red aoe lines being hard to see on the gated floor, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t notice that happen to me, too.

I beat Liadri last year. It took countless attempts to defeat her.. Took me 5 tries to beat her this time in a rematch, only because I forgot the pattern for Phase 1. She’s much, MUCH easier this year. And that’s a good thing because a lot of that difficulty came from bullkitten things.

The removal of the dome is great as it removes a lot of the camera problems the original fight had.

The original ground notification for Liadri’s Shadow Fall ability used to be extremely hard to see. Just the original thin red lines across a gated floor. Often times I simply couldn’t tell where the danger zone is. Now, Liadri uses the Watchknight / Prime Hologram / worldboss style ground notifications making it very clear where Shadowfall is going to land.

The introduction of a medic that revives players after losing the fight is great. Before you needed another player kind enough to wait around and revive you if you lost the fight and if you didn’t have that you had to walk aallll the way back up. Doing the fight before used to be extremely frustrating because of this.

Over all, I feel like the fight has been fixed and made mostly fair. That said, I think they nerfed her total phase 2 health, I think? She dropped really fast for me compared to last time. I don’t really think that was necessary but whatever. Once I got to phase 2 it was like the fight was impossible to lose.

Anyway, it was fun to have a rematch and I really like the new title. It’s a much better indicator of completing the hardest solo challenge in the game compared to the minipet.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

No they are not. Which this example illustrates. If Sylvari die, instead of being corrupted, then they can’t be dragon minions.

Exactly like what we see with dragon minions when attacked by other Elder Dragons / minions.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

No Glint confirms it spectacularly. Glint had to be given back her free will through a ritual by the Forgotten.

We have absolutely no idea what exactly the ritual itself entailed. It also didn’t remove the corruption, it just gave Glint her free will back. She remained crystalized for the rest of her life.

For all we know, the spell that freed Glint could have bombarded glint with thoughts to the point where it drowned out and cut off her connection to Kralkatorrik, like some sort of massive mesmer mental attack. We know elder dragons and their minions are susceptible to illusions and mental attacks.

It’s silly to say “This confirms or disproves that!” when we don’t even know that “this” is. Just because Glint regained free will by one method, doesn’t mean new methods won’t be found in the future.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

You are failing to understand the actual argument. We know Sylvari die, instead of being corrupted. However, Subject Alpha shows that different draconic energies can be combined without killing the subject. In other words, Sylvari aren’t dragon minions, or they wouldn’t die from corruption.

Dragon Minions DO die from corruption from other Dragons. Just an example, if a Branded gets hit by Blightghast the Plaguebringer’s corrupting breath it will just die. That’s how it happens in nature.

Subject Alpha is not natural. We have no idea how it was created. The Inquest could have engineered their own unique corruption by copying the traits they wanted, thus it didn’t truly have different draconic energies. The Inquest could have administered the varying corruptions to different parts of the host body simultaneously so they don’t over lap and block one another.

We don’t know. It’s wrong to say it proves anything when it could just as easily not be the case.

lnguy.5127:

Additionally, we know that every dragon minion is completely and utterly devoted to it’s master, and has no free will (Sons of Svanir are not dragon minions, and some Risen join willingly and thus retain free will). Glint was the only dragon champion that we know of, that was given back it’s free will by the Forgotten. Svanir shows that the only other alternative, is death. So Sylvari can’t be dragon minions, they have free will!

We also know that dragon minions are autonomous, are susceptible to illusions, even if the illusion is of the Elder Dragon they allegedly follow, can be damaged and dominated by mental attacks.

Glint also laid Eggs. And the Dragon that hatched wasn’t a Dragon Minion despite Glint being corrupted. If the Pale Tree is a freed Dragon Champion, its children would likely have free will just as Glint’s child does.

Naus the Gobbo.5172:

Didn’t Colin say in an interview that they would make the jungle dragon first?

He said that Kralkatorrik and the Jungle Dragon are good possible candidates for a first expansion. AN isn’t working on an expansion. That said, they have said they wanted to replace expansion content with the living story. So whether or not that’s what they’re planning is really up in the air.

I still think its the Jungle Dragon and that the Jungle Dragon is tied to the Pale Tree. It’s makes a lot of sense that after diving into the essence of the Pale Tree and discovering its true nature, Scarlett begins being harassed by the Dragon that created it.

There are some serious problems with this though. For starters, the Jungle Dragon is likely sleeping under the Maguuma Wastes based on what Colin said in that interview. And according to Scarlett’s projector, whatever she’s gunning for is under Lion’s Arch.

It seems really strange and it’d be really sloppy for Scarlett, a character who’s focused around the Pale Tree and motivated by her desire to be liberated from it, suddenly gets harassed by Primordus or some other random entity that’s completely unrelated.

Red Queen.7915:

Correct me if I’m wrong, but can’t a commander form a squad that functions exactly like that? So all you have to do is find a commander for each lane/wurm and have them keep track of their own group. That’s how this is supposed to work, anyway, so I don’t really understand this particular complaint.

Trust me, the organization and team composition of the commander and squad system is extremely lacking compared to what you see with other MMOs and what this game is asking from its players.

If ArenaNet is going to keep releasing content like this, they need to add an expanded party option that can include everyone in the zone. This would be so much easier if there was something like WoW’s old raiding system where you have multiple parties in a raid allowing you to organize very easily. Just being able to say “Groups 1, 2, 3, and 4 go crimson. Groups 5,6,7,8 go Amber, ect. ect.” would make this so much more accessible and less frustrating. Just an easy way of counting and organizing the zerg rather currently counting manually, and shouting what lane needs more and hoping a few people pop over would make a world if difference.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

Plus Sylvari can’t be corrupted, while we know that dragon minions CAN be corrupted by other dragons. So they aren’t dragon minions. It’s as simple as that.

You’re wrong. Neither the Sylvari or Dragon Minions can be corrupted by other dragons. They are the only known example of creatures with this trait.

cheshirefox.7026:

i could just as easily propose that the pale tree is a “champion” of melandru as much as it “could be” an “intended” champion of dragon corruption

The gods officially left the world and all intervention within it back at the end of Nightfall. They aren’t active agents in the world anymore. The Elder Dragons are.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

lnguy.5127:

2. The Pale Tree could be Modremoth champion, might have fallen off of Modremoth’s path due to the influence from Ventari’s teachings.

No it couldn’t. The Elder Dragons existed long before the Pale Tree even came into existence, and have been sleeping ever since. Somewhere before they started awakening, Ronan found a cave with seeds, and took one with him, which he planted in what is now the Grove (Arbor Bay back then). It is only years after the seed had been planted, that the Elder Dragons started awakening, starting with Primordus.

So how could the Pale Tree possibly be a dragon champion?

If Mordremoth was still asleep, like all Elder Dragons, how could Ronan find a seed belonging to Mordremoth? Are Elder Dragons just spawning new champions while they are asleep?

Yes. We know for a fact that the Elder Dragons have at least some portion of their champions spawn / awaken before they do so they can gather magical energy and awaken their master. Which is what Primordus did with the Great Destroyer. And this is also why Primordus took so long to fully awaken. The champion that was supposed to awaken it was destroyed and this delayed its awakening for 42 years. The dragon champions do not necessarily sleep alongside their Elder Dragons. Glint is an example of this.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

And were all these seeds potential champions of Mordremoth? In which case, how did Ronan and Ventari give this champion free will? They didn’t do any special magical rituals. All they did was plant the seed symbolically, and then write a marble tablet. It was their attitudes and philosophy that affected the Pale Tree…. but that is not enough to liberate a Dragon Champion from its master!

If that were the case, why aren’t we all crafting our own marble tablets with words of peace and harmony, and liberating the Claw of Jormag, or Tequatl? If it were that easy to turn a dedicated servant of one of the Elder Dragons from evil to good, it would kind of make a mockery out of the Elder Dragons and their powers.

Once someone serves an Elder Dragon, it takes considerable magic to free them, as we know from when Glint was liberated. It is not something that can simply be undone. Jora had to kill her brother to free him, it was the only way. The Pale Tree cannot be a champion of Mordremoth.

For this very same reason, the Pale Tree can also not be an Elder Dragon itself. That was simply a hypothesis put forward by WoodenPotatoes and his videos, who reads a lot of lore discussions and borrows from them. He is however not as knowledgeable about lore as the lore community. But this theory has been shot down multiple times.

The pale tree spent 250 years absorbing the hopes, dreams, thoughts and beliefs of the people that lived around it. It wasn’t as simple as “Carve a marble tablet.” It also didn’t necessarily take as we see with the Nightmare Court.

The fact of the matter is that we don’t know what the Pale Tree is. But we do know that it is extremely protective of its true nature. We saw the Pale Tree outright begging Scarlett to not learn its true nature. If the Pale Tree were just some magical tree, or even some sort of planet antibody against the Elder Dragons, it would not be so protective of its true nature. The fact of the matter is that the Pale Tree clearly has something dark or embarrassing about its true nature that it wants to hide. Being a champion of an Elder Dragon would fit in with that.

Qaelyn.7612:

.. but I’ve found I’ve already gotten bored and moved back to doing other things. And that never usually happens for me with LW content.

I like the idea of a challenging boss that requires a lot of coordination from a group.. it is an MMO after all. But these events just aren’t fun to participate in after trying them a few times:
- Too much waiting around.
- Too much annoyance trying to get a party into an OF that actually has a decent number of players in it.

Know what? I agree. There’s a lot of waiting around and that’s not ideal. In MMORPGs with traditional raiding, you set a time and the raid gets together prepares itself and starts working on content.

But this isn’t raiding. It’s open world content. I like that aspect of it, but as a result there are going to be complications. In order for open world content to be both appropriately difficult and doable, it’s going to need to be on a schedule so that people know when to gather. These two bosses are on two hour long timers and set up so that one of them is starting at the turn of the hour. Both of them take about half an hour or so so there’s 30 minutes of downtime between content.

I think this is a necessary evil, however. Lets say that instead of timers, these events have previous chains that reset whenever the group fails. That way, when the group fails it can restart the event almost immediately. No waiting. No downtime.

This would mean that both events would be going on at the exact same time, splitting the population between the two potentially making them both impossible.

Overflows are an entirely different matter. Over flows are extremely problematic and I’m personally not sure of a good solution to them.

Qaelyn.7612:

- Too much failure.
- Too little reward when you fail.

I’m glad they don’t give out oodles of drops for each kill, as that would just encourage farming rather than trying to beat the event. But spending an hour and getting almost nothing for the effort stinks. And while I felt we should wait a bit before passing judgment on the difficulty, I think it’s pretty obvious at this point that these are too difficult for most people to be able to participate in a team that actually beats them.

I hope this doesn’t become yet another example of what’s all too common in MMOs: great content that clearly took a lot of time and effort to make, that gets ignored by most players because it needs to be tweaked but isn’t.

I’m going to disagree with you here. A lot. If there was no chance for failure, then these wouldn’t be that rewarding to play. The harder they are, the more exciting the possibility of success is. I’m on Maguuma. We took down the Marionette today and it was great. It wouldn’t have been anywhere near as fun and rewarding if it wasn’t for all the times I’ve failed the attempt previously. Since its been released, everyone has gotten a bit better and better at it and now we’ve done it.

While we haven’t beaten it, the same is true for the Jungle Wurms. There was a late night attempt at them. There weren’t anywhere near enough people to do all three events, only about 20 or 30 so people, so we decided to do the escort quest and then have everyone just focus on one of the heads so that we can get understanding and practice at the boss. We got the head down to 10%. The people who’ve done that attempt can try it again and with the knowledge and experience gained be more successful at it in the future and that’ll apply to the entire server over time.

Rewards for failure is something I find to be completely backwards. Rewards should be for when you complete content successfully. Failure in games is something to be learned from. If you want rewards, you try again. And you don’t come away from failure completely empty handed. You’ve gained practice and experience.

Quite frankly, these bosses should give out oodles of drops for each kill. That’s the tangible motivation for beating these bosses. I personally think the rewards are underwhelming. There needs to be tons people regularly trying to beat these boss. If people get good enough at the event and they start to be killed regularly. Good. The players would have earned it through skill and knowledge of the encounter.

There are a lot of issues with these types of events. They’re impossible for small servers to complete, which makes lots of people guest to over populated servers getting stuck in disorganized overflow servers. This type of content also requires a lot of communication, especially early on and the game doesn’t really facilitate that easily. In other MMORPGs, raiding guilds usually have their own ventrilo or teamspeak. That isn’t really going to work here because again, open world content and overflow servers puts a damper on any guild that wants to primarily organize for doing these kinds of events.

I suggest leveling a thief with a shortbow.

Leveling my thief with the shortbow was just so much fun and it’s always remained a great alternative when I get a bit bored of my warrior main.

Thieves have an incredibly amount of mobility that makes them a blast to play. The shortbow will give you incredible AOE damage and mobility and you can rock pretty much any other weapon combination for the weapon swap when you need to melee.

The thief mechanics are also really fun. Rather than cooldowns, they have initiative which is an energy resource that fills up. None of their weapon skills have cooldowns, they just cost initiative so you can spam them. There’s nothing quite like rounding up a bunch of enemies together and just shotgunning them down with shortbow’s clusterbombs.