Guild Wars 2

How about some sort of power phantasm build? Lack of greatness guaranteed.

I’ve never been entirely clear on this. Do Sigil of Force and Sigil of the Night affect Mind Wrack, or only actual weaponskills? In the event they do affect shatters, do they proc on each clone?

I am trying to determine which, for the purposes of spike damage in a scenario where the fight is not drawn out, the best sigil choices would be from among Force, Night, Air, and Fire.

Sodeni.6041:

I seriously don’t know why they didn’t make a beta weekend ~2-3 months before release so they would have time to fix the specs.

Because it wasn’t a beta test, it was a PR event to generate hype for the release.

Simonoly.4352:

Yeah this is so much weaker than I was expecting. There’s going to be some massive buffs in certain areas.

This isn’t a class that historically gets “massive buffs”.

aandiarie.7195:

It’s probably also because it’s the beta. I bet it’ll work better when it comes out all the way.

That might be true if this company used beta events to gain feedback, but they don’t. They use them to build hype. It is far too late in the development cycle to try to make drastic changes when they go live so soon.

Dodge dodge dodge dodge while spreading conditions.

Sounds…fun?

The pip kitten and the legendary backpack already brought in pve clowns who run from fights unless they outnumber you. Roaming is literally just chasing down people until they come across more and gank you.

This just makes it easier for people to run from fights. I am not surprised to see so many pve heroes cream their panties over it.

Izay.8725:

You need HoT for PvE legendary armor too. I think Gliding should be free too but at the same time it’s 20$ and you get so much pve content, support the game for pete’s sake.

You’re welcome.

It’s kind of hard to defend “GW2 isn’t Pay2Win” when a core spec in WvW will get absolutely destroyed by HoT elites.

Sethek.8602:

With these new changes I am sure some good power builds will pop up for mesmer

No.

and I was wondering if assassin gear would always be superior to berserker for dps.

No.

Vavume.8065:

VaaCrow.3076:

this will be interesting, i look forward to the change, its only within your territory so should be entertaining

My deadeye will be waiting for you when you flying over head and shoot you down like a duck :P this is going to be hilarious.

Yet another way for thieves to kill people that have no chance of fighting back. The elite that makes a class designed for cowards even more cowardly. /slowclap

zomgbuffalo.5276:

How does it affect condi meta? Does this mean condi will become weaker in pvp/wvw scene?

No, lol. Maybe in 2019.

Cyninja.2954:

msalakka.4653:

Ah, another p2w Power Creep Pack. They’ll probably release it in September or early October so they can still cash in separately on Mad King and Wintersday specials.

While I could not possibly care less about their pve nonsense, I look forward to having to shell out the cost of the expansion just to have access to the latest mandatory OP spec in the competitive modes.

Until they nerf it, anyway.

Yes, must be terrible to have to spend some money on the game after close to 2 years.

Shame on the developers to want to live and feed their families.

I have no problem spending money on the game. I’ve bought 4000 gems this month alone. Thing is, I prefer to buy something because it enhances my experience in the game, and not because not buying it would invalidate it, as was the case with HoT (chrono vs core mesmer in WvW).

Ah, another p2w Power Creep Pack. They’ll probably release it in September or early October so they can still cash in separately on Mad King and Wintersday specials.

While I could not possibly care less about their pve nonsense, I look forward to having to shell out the cost of the expansion just to have access to the latest mandatory OP spec in the competitive modes.

Until they nerf it, anyway.

InsaneQR.7412:

Weapon is probably melee condi cleave. . . . Hopefully it is designed arround distortion evade and buffs from that. I wanted to build an over evasive mesmer since i build be near perma block DH.

That’s precisely what we need in WvW, more evades, more blocks, more condi.

I hope they also add stealth duration food and give mesmers access to conditraps, for more excitement.

Or maybe just undo the linking horseshit and work on BALANCE.

Natto.5819:

Guildie wondering if wasted tactics will be somehow refunded?

Guildie is going to be sorely disappointed.

Solo roamers roam. Groups of 2-5 don’t roam, they gank.

Jayne.9251:

NA had the issue with server stacking; prior to linking, EU did not have the issue — or at least not to the extreme that was seen in NA.

The linking has brought the NA bandwagon movement to EU. We really hadn’t seen it in EU prior to linking; again not to the extreme that was happening in NA. SFR was the only server, allegedly, that actively paid for guilds to transfer to its server. It’s why it remained dominant for a long time.

EU players: solo, roamers, guilded, but particularly guilded had discussions amongst each other to ensure that three max big guilds were on each server to ensure a good ratio of fights. These guilds self-organized and helped balance out the rest of the pug masses. And I’m pretty sure none of these guilds cared whether they were in 1st, 2nd or 10th spot: they just wanted to make sure they had the bodies to fight to challenge them and their friends during their leisure time.

What did motivate them were queue times: If they got too long on any given server, they’d move down in tiers.

It wound up creating a pleasant playing field where pugs could improve skillset by tagging along with high level guilds — and pugs would leave the guilds alone if they were working on group raids/compositions etc… Scouts could call out blob reports and the guilds would actually (good naturedly) fight with each other in map chat over who got to take on the blob first. I even witnessed one guild wait at the side to let another guild have the first shot.

EU servers period would complain about what is common in NA — zerging. And accuse other guilds of hand holding if they didn’t wait turns.

It’s just a completely different mentality. In EU it’s about the gameplay, in NA it was about the reward/first place, etc… Weekends on most EU servers were empty because folks were out doing things with family and friends. Weekdays became the game days.

EU did not need linking to balance out the population. The majority played during prime and there were small groups of devoted “daytime/nighttime” regulars.

The server balance issues were NA only. Linking was created for NA.

As someone who’s been playing WvW on Gandara since early ‘13 and seen this first-hand, I can’t +1 this post enough.

Why anyone would ask for developer confirmation of this, I don’t understand. They have no clue about their own game, just look at the class balance. Condi is fine in their book. Tells you everything you need to know.

All these pve tears are hilarious.

The absence of all the HoT garbage, and fighting individuals instead of builds.

It’s a nerf. It’s clunky and unimpressive. I wish they rolled it back to what it was.

Azukas.1426:

msalakka.4653:

I don’t understand the point of the hype. It reminds me of the Chrono hype before HoT came out.

Whatever they release will be promptly nerfed back to the stone ages because god forbid Mesmer actually be useful.

Mesmer has been a staple in the meta in every game mode since HoT released.

Mesmer has been a requirement not useful.

lol

I guess we have a different idea of usefulness.

If you are satisfied spamming quickness in PvE fighting cron scripts, that’s on you.

The whole thing feels extremely clunky to use now. It’s amazing what a difference .25 s can make.

I don’t understand the point of the hype. It reminds me of the Chrono hype before HoT came out.

Whatever they release will be promptly nerfed back to the stone ages because god forbid Mesmer actually be useful.

Can’t get excited about any of it tbh. Whatever they release they will promptly nerf to uselessness anyway.

I am having the strongest Freshman Composition flashback.

I would applaud anything that decreases the number of speculation/idea threads re: new elite specializations.

I like your suggestions. They make perfect sense for having a fluid, informative, engaging discourse.

I personally mostly enjoy dropping in sarcastic remarks, for which the MLA format is fairly useless.

Arkaile.5604:

Gruenthorr.3625:

~Revenant, revenant is that one that can do everything. It can do a lot of damage, can provide boon upkeep, provides boon corrupt, provides aoe resistance and that hammer of course.
One thing I dislike about revenant is the hammer. Hammer has 1200 range and does a lot of damage specially CoR. You can run revenant with like 2.8k armor and still do crazy damage because of skills are set up that way and the traits provide so much extra dps especially the one that doubles your fury from 20% to 40%.. thats broken. Hammer auto range is fine at 1200, CoR range needs to be 900, phase smash needs to be 900 and drop the hammer needs to be 900. Also the staff 5 surge of the mists needs a procing time, currently the skill goes off instantly, there needs to be 1/4-3/4 seconds for the skill to proc. I know revenants got dps nerf in PvP which was good that is also needed in WvW.

Banish Enchantment has a range of 600, btw; just kite the rev and use some reflects or blocks if the hammer’s AA is giving you trouble. I understand it applies confusion, but that shouldn’t be a problem unless the rev is a condi rev and you, for some reason, decided to not have any condi clear ready in wvw and have forgotten how to kite.

Kite the rev? He’s talking about fighting zergs, not roaming encounters.

pointaction.4639:

Over all just make all the maps more fun, challenging and enjoyable to play on.

See this is where it all goes off the rails.

I bet “more fun, challenging, and enjoyable” were pretty much what the goal of the designer’s original concept for the DBL was.

I am very thick-skulled so it takes me a while to grasp things, but I still don’t understand why people keep yammering about new maps. They took years to fix the trebs from spawn issue on the Alpine, and now the DBL has trebs at the southeast spawn that will undoubtedly take years to fix again. If Alpine has an issue why it’s no longer sufficient to play on – fix it. Don’t just introduce new maps that couple the same old problems with fresh new ones.

People put too much faith in the power of a new map. To create one is a massive undertaking in terms of employee time and resources. Why dedicate that amount of man hours on something that isn’t going to solve the problem. Taking 40 stacks of bleed from a necro isn’t going to be more fun, challenging, and enjoyable on the new map.

Chinchilla.1785:

I also suspect incoming damage cap increases server load because it adds that additional step of denial (sort of like DDOS).

What if we hit two birds with one stone and made a new condition called Ponderance that acted like skill lag. Stacks would increase the number of milliseconds between skills firing. “I have 14 stacks of Ponderance, I can’t fire anything off.” Surely spacing out skills being fired would lessen the server load? After all there’s nothing Anet likes more than releasing new conditions.

Does it really matter whether your combat log shows hits from 20 berserkers or one necro with 40 stacks of bleed?

The inflated numbers are due to PvErs.

Most seasoned vets who played this game mode for the PvP element & honest to god fights have left due to lack of developer focus. The numbers, to which devs allude to when they want to proclaim that the game mode is healthy, remain the same only thanks to the reward tracks bringing in PvE players.

I’ve played WvW for four years now, and one thing I have observed is that the militia is seemingly a lot less intelligent than they were before. I am constantly finding myself fighting alongside people who have not even the most basic grasp of fighting against actual human players. Is it because they are less intelligent? No, but fighting humans for the thrill of the fight and fighting cron scripts for rewards are two very different animals and those players are here only for the latter.

You can see it particularly well when there is no commander on the map. The map can have a queue but if there’s no commander, nothing at all is being accomplished.

Or if you are a commander yourself, do me a favour: the next time you have a squad on you, ask everyone who is carrying siege disablers to ping them. I can guarantee you it will be 2 out of every 10 people at maximum.

They’re not there for the fights, and we can thank Anet for that. The development they’ve done with the “WvW rework” and the work afterwards has been nothing but slapping bandaids over kittenous growth. Trying to play this game mode as a competitive one is like peeling back that bandaid.

Ironically, the biggest problem has always had little to do with map design, but class balance, which isn’t even the purview of the WvW team. They can make whatever maps they want, but if the fights themselves aren’t fun, it won’t make any difference.

What would be the pros and cons of removing or significantly reducing the 30-second delay between guard aggro and the “swords” appearing on a contested camp?

As a home bl defender and scout I find that ever since HoT power creep implementation there is little point in trying to respond to a contested camp unless you happen to be nearby when the swords come up or it’s Vale/Water and you have a WP in Bay/Hills and play a class like Thief with superior mobility.

When the maps were originally designed it made sense to have that timer so as to give solo players a chance to cap because you had to be careful about it, most classes and builds couldn’t just rambo in. However in the post-HoT world anyone with half a brain can solo clear even an upgraded camp quickly, in many cases killing all the NPCs before the swords even come up.

Being better has little to do with it these days. It all comes down to class and build vs class and build.

It’s the more powerful the less opponents you are fighting. One of the strongest 1v1 specs, and useless in zerg fights.

glass.3245:

Thief is designed to be a solo roaming class – if you go one on one with a good thief in WvW you should expect to die.

They don’t need to be good. Therein lies the problem.

These stats aren’t the problem; the general power creep is. Nerfing Trailblazer will do very little as at least Mesmer is just as lethal with Viper/Sinister and nearly as survivable if geared correctly. The condi meta is in response to the insane power creep of elites like Berserker and Daredevil with 8 hours of passives and evades.

Speaking as a Mesmer, Condi Chrono is indeed fairly boring and has an extremely low skill floor, but there is nothing between this and the nigh-impossibility of solo roaming on Power Shatter.

The meta isn’t just condi, it’s spam. Whether you can spam your skills brainlessly in zerk gear or condibunker depends on your class, but at the end of the day no one is having fun and Anet is asleep at the switch.

Without a doubt, Jade Sea has the best, flying Dragonhunters. The third week against these clowns, the second “lagger”.

Playing thief of any build is akin to retiring from trying.

Playing ghost thief? I’d rather uninstall.

HazyDaisy.4107:

Other than that, a new wvw event where seige disablers work every night of the week except reset night would be interesting.

Couldn’t they make it so that for the duration of the disabled effect, the siege would also be afflicted with various conditions, such as 10-20 stacks of bleed or burning? I really think we need more conditions flying around.

A week versus FIVE French servers without siege disablers.

You win, Anet. You win.

Just spam chill and bleed as usual, problem solved.

Xenon.4537:

I remember when mesmer meta was phantasm/reflect build… Never shatter, just summon 3 phantasms and pray to RNGesus that they stay alive and deal damage. Reflect cheese all day exploding bosses and ignoring mechanics…

Haha yeah I remember that. Then I’d come across a shatter mesmer (which was rare, most ran Blackwater) and get my kitten torn up because I had no idea how to fight one…

It’s because the game has moved on from the time when it had skilled commanders who understood tactical warfare. Now it’s just mouthbreathers farming reward tracks and there is no better place for that than EB.

TwiceDead.1963:

If a thief has to reset, he has lost the engagement as he’s also resetting the opponent. If anything, the next time the Thief engages it’ll be at a disadvantage because the opponent will be ready.

The opponent’s kitten will be on cooldown, that’s the whole point of the resetting.

It is by design. The damage is increased by hand so they can keep it in check. Vitality and crit rate aren’t passed on because then you could just gear for them instead of having to take Signet of Illusions and Phantasmal Fury, respectively. It’s a throwback to a time when the trait system provided multiple build options along with having to choose between being tanky and doing damage. Well, I suppose the latter still applies to Mesmer, if no one else.

Ballads.2509:

Base Mesmer doesn’t require Travelers. Out of combat just temporal curtain, swap back weapon, and spam your stealths or swap in soi for a long haul. Its no lazy 25% passive but Perma swiftness is obtainable.

Yeah I’ve tried it, and it’s not for me. I’m not going to waste a slot on SoI, and there were too many times when I was caught in combat with /focus. Which do I want to be caught fighting a Thief without, my main source of stealth (torch) or my main source of damage & interrupt (pistol)?

It’s not required, but I don’t need the headache.

Dusty Moon.4382:

msalakka.4653:

Carighan.6758:

What’s functionally bad about conditions, if you don’t mind me asking?

When I play a power build, I “feel” the damage when it hits the target. There’s an immediate connect with cause and effect when a burst lands.

With conditions, it’s basically just loading them up and then watching to see what happens next.

Essentially, with power I feel like they died because I did something right. With condi, they die because they didn’t.

I agree though that I should not refer to functional builds as cheese. The word gets overused and I use it out of frustration. My main when I started the game was a Guardian, and I find it disgraceful what DH did to it. But when I see a core Guardian now I know it’s an easy kill, so the class is probably as locked into DH as we are to condi.

GWMO.4785:

I for one am pretty much in similar position as you are. Don’t like to play condition builds but it works so i use it. However unlike you i do have a few changes. For instance my setups is a mix of Dire/Trailblazer. This mostly because Dire is super easy to get as where Trailblazer is expansive to make. (I do plan/work my way up to full Trailblazer btw). Also i run Chronomancer instead of core Mesmer, because i love chrono and core is kinda meh to me. Again not the most fun build to use. But it works.. hell.. its very strong even. My current setup: http://tinyurl.com/chrono-wvw-condi (Yes its absolute cancer)

As for powerbuilds. I find them mostly weaker, but likewise i also have seen people that can play it really well. Even in outnumbered situations. few examples are these:

http://tinyurl.com/yt-scarlet-phantom
http://tinyurl.com/yt-tsuki-yomi

Your build is similar to my current one. The reason I take some rabid trinkets is I absolutely love the pistol, and I need at least 40% crit rate for it to really get those bleeds going. I run Chaos/Inspiration/Dueling with Mistrust and traited pistol. I thought I’d miss MtD and Confusion-on-shatter but it turns out I don’t at all, nor do I need DE.

Of course a build that uses the UBER EXPENSIVE perplexity runes. They just need a nerf and other runes would be just as useful.

They are less than 5g per piece, so hardly expensive. Personally, though, since I don’t use Chrono I am relegated to Travelers.

Carighan.6758:

What’s functionally bad about conditions, if you don’t mind me asking?

When I play a power build, I “feel” the damage when it hits the target. There’s an immediate connect with cause and effect when a burst lands.

With conditions, it’s basically just loading them up and then watching to see what happens next.

Essentially, with power I feel like they died because I did something right. With condi, they die because they didn’t.

I agree though that I should not refer to functional builds as cheese. The word gets overused and I use it out of frustration. My main when I started the game was a Guardian, and I find it disgraceful what DH did to it. But when I see a core Guardian now I know it’s an easy kill, so the class is probably as locked into DH as we are to condi.

GWMO.4785:

I for one am pretty much in similar position as you are. Don’t like to play condition builds but it works so i use it. However unlike you i do have a few changes. For instance my setups is a mix of Dire/Trailblazer. This mostly because Dire is super easy to get as where Trailblazer is expansive to make. (I do plan/work my way up to full Trailblazer btw). Also i run Chronomancer instead of core Mesmer, because i love chrono and core is kinda meh to me. Again not the most fun build to use. But it works.. hell.. its very strong even. My current setup: http://tinyurl.com/chrono-wvw-condi (Yes its absolute cancer)

As for powerbuilds. I find them mostly weaker, but likewise i also have seen people that can play it really well. Even in outnumbered situations. few examples are these:

http://tinyurl.com/yt-scarlet-phantom
http://tinyurl.com/yt-tsuki-yomi

Your build is similar to my current one. The reason I take some rabid trinkets is I absolutely love the pistol, and I need at least 40% crit rate for it to really get those bleeds going. I run Chaos/Inspiration/Dueling with Mistrust and traited pistol. I thought I’d miss MtD and Confusion-on-shatter but it turns out I don’t at all, nor do I need DE.

I am tired of condi builds. Sick and tired of them.

I am a (mostly solo) home border defender and scout in WvW. I rarely bother with sPvP or the mind-numbing dullness of PvE.

As such, I need to run a build that can handle 1vX encounters and escape randomly appearing zergs and gank squads.

Pre-ferocity I used to run Power Phantasm (<3) or Osicat’s PU Power, because Blackwater was never my thing. After HoT, a marauder/zerk mix with shield and Defender runes was pretty good at first, and I won my share of 1v2s with it. But now, for whatever reason, it just gets eaten alive, particularly by thieves (who even completely disable my downstate skills, for good measure). Not to mention DHs, and BlockMaster 2000 Scrappers…

So here I am running Trailblazer/Rabid and the condi pressure is absolutely disgusting. However, it works. So I get to do what I log in for and run a boring as kitten build while doing it. Hooray. Even with 2k+ toughness I still ate a 10k Arc Divider so I shiver to think what I’d have taken had I been glass.

I’ve tried everything from Minstrels to Marauders to Commanders, from boon duration & BD to wells and glamour. I am sure some of them are workable if you run in an organized havoc group, but for solo play, not so much.

Please for the love of O’Brien tell me there is a build I’ve just not found that can breathe life into this game, because I am tired of condi bullkitten being the only viable option and listening to remarks from fellow WvW players, most of whom run equally cheesy specs on their Druids, DHs, Berserkers and Daredevils. They think that because they’ve been bursted down by a Power Shatter in a havoc group that you can run that kitten solo.