Guild Wars 2

apharma.3741:

The funniest part are the people who think condi Mesmer is in any way good for this. They’re NPCs, they don’t spam attacks like idiots and the AoE torment is pitiful, OP would be much better on condi engy, ranger, guard and even necro and do it a lot quicker.

I believe a decent rabid ranger can kill the Lord in about a minute not the 5+ the OP took.

Your’re missunderstanding something

Those are all pretty facerolly Variants with higher offensive output than a condimesmer while still retaining more than enough survivability to facetank most of the incoming Attacks – but while they do have more damage output, they still are at a disatvantage if it comes to surviving compared to the Stealthtank-Mesmer. Clearing those Keeps is pretty easy on ALL of those builds; but it will not change the fact, that – while definetly not being the fastest – doing so is most likely the easiest on a can’t-die-unless-drunk-or-getting-hit-by-lightning-in-real-life-while-playing Condi-Stealthmesmer.

I can assure you, if i as a player would notice any of the Condibuilds mentioned by you attempting to take the Lord, i would still kill them because they won’t survive the attacks of Champ + X Guards + whatever build i would run at that Time. Vs. the PU Condimesmer? Nope, even with the NPC Support you would have to trait specifically to combat it – unless the guy using it plays really abysmal (which happens from time to time, thanks to the bandwaggoners that boarded the Mesmerclass when – and because - the July Update hit).

Of course there are better builds to clear the Keeps fast – it’s just that Condi-stealth Mesmer is the least likely one to let you die regardless of how many errors it’s user makes :P

Most “Class XY soloing Keep Z” Videos show tanky condibuilds facetanking NPC guards while spamming whatever is off-cooldown, which isn’t particulary impressive.

This is one of those.

Hell, the fact that it was done by a chaos-line-traiting, tripple-stealth Condimesmer makes it even less impressive

Just try to think of some poor enemie player stumbling across the scene

“Ha! Attacking the Lord by himself? I will show him why that’s a bad idea!”

[notices stealth condimes]

“Oh. Yet another stealth condimesmer. Nahh, go on and take it, not gonna waste my time trying to kill you….”

guildabd.6529:

As title says. I don’t see why it shouldn’t.

I see why it should not It is already kinda easy to create an Engineer Build that makes you extremly hard to kill (pretty much anything combining toughness and maybe healing Power with Alchemy and Inventions), especially due to the active defenses and very strong selfhealing (Engis are probably the next best thing after Cele D/Ds or Mantra Mesmers if it comes to selfheal); Now imagine 5 such Engis running near each other with such a trait – they would become nigh immortal against similar sized Groups.

Ofc thats only the case if the Regeneration would Stack – If it did not, then i would love to see it affecting allies as well

…

…

what?

Ughh… this reminds me of my latin-courses in school. At some point the grammar got way too complicated for me, so i just ended up translating the individual words, trying to bring them into an order that remotely made sense whenever i was asked to translate a text.

Okay, let’s just make some guesses as to what the OP could have meant – semantically, ofc:

I play with an early start.

• So he started playing GW2 early on, meaning he’s been playing it for a long time now (probably since release, which would be very early)?

But apparently not good enough I learned the game.

• But apparently all that (supposedly long) time he’s been playing until now still wasn’t enough to properly learn about the Game (as in: knowing tactics, skills, whatever – i’am pretty sure this was an attempt to be sarcastic, considering the following statements)
• Or he’s bitter that he himself didn’t try learning about it properly despite all the time he’s spent playing gw2 so far. The difference doesn’t really matter though if it was sarcasm :p

Therefore, I ask the representatives of the guild [DYE], as well as the administration of the project to explain here what things:

• Therefore he is asking the Representatives of the Guild [DYE]
• AS WELL AS the Developers [i think he meant them due to the last sentence, which mentions “Project Logs” – and the only thing capable of “logging” anything here would be the devs, or at least the admins supervising the servers]
• To explain the following Occurrences:

1. Like not having a part Elementalist used for 8-10 people Ice Bow? While everyone?

Another guess…

• How can 8-10 People have an Icebow if there was not a single [not having part Elementalist] Elementalist amongst them?

2. How to kill this lineup blob of 20+ people for a few seconds?

• How could they kill a lined-up blobb [maybe a blobb spread out in a line (as most Karmatrains seem to be when moving between targets) as opposed to a blobb concentrated on a small Area, which would make them more vulnerable to AoE (ignoring AoE cap here:P)?] in just a few seconds?

At the same time the sound was, and animation shots with onion ice was not. At the same time while in Stealth.

• So he was able to hear the shot’s [most likely the impacts of Icebow #4] without the special Effect [red Cyrcle and/or Projectiles themselves] being rendered at all.
• Furthermore, his enemy where stealthed despite inflicting Damage on OP’s Karmatrain friends.

3. The skill of a class should be used to guard “Save yourself” imposes skill debuff? Pre-sound was like a trap thief.

Have to take another far fetched guess again:

• Either the OP was a Guardian using “Save yourselves!”, and he wants to tell us that it actually gave him debuffs (or conditions) instead of buffs (boons)
• Or the mean guild assaulting him had Guardians using “Save yourselves”, which imposed debuffs on their enemys (including the OP?)
• In any way, he tells us that “Save Yourselves” causd the same Sound as a Trap Thief (whatever a Trap Thief sounds like) before it was executed.

I just really want to win as epic

• Warning! Sarcasm detected! Basically the same thing as telling a supposed hacker “wow, i wanna be as good as you some day :O!!!!!”.

P.S. Seriously, I urge the administration to see the project logs. Full feeling that used substitute packages. I see this for the first time since 2012.
IP adress: [redacted]
Time: About an hour ago, and to date.

• OP wants the Administrators to view either some sort of Network Log (which wouldn’t really help, since hackers abuse the logical Relationship between the Serverside-Application and the Clientside-Applications, which happens on a much higher level of abstraction anyway ) or the logical, serverside log capturing players Activities in-game, which would at least make some sense (though i have no idea what kind of plausibility checks a-net even built in).
• Substitue packages? Guess he wanted to show us that he really thinks on the wrong level of abstraction :p

tbh, to me OP’s complaints seem like a mix of lag, not paying attention to his surroundings, and probably his Client refusing to render Effects due to the mass of them (1st and 3rd happen regulary on my potato of a laptop – depending on the workload, allied and enemy players will be the first not to be rendered, followed by Skill SFX – including Meteor Shower and Icebow, so i know that from experience). Also wonder how he was able to see that 8-10 ppl had icebows when he states that none of them where visible?

Well, enough confusion for today :P

Arius.7031:

I read your entire post, and while thought provoking (and indeed this is a problem in larger scale events), I think you’re completely wrong.

As a long time member of the WvW and PvP dueling community (as a fairly high end member), I can tell you that even most amateurs can reliably see and dodge basic high profile attacks from enemies. I myself can dodge pretty much anything non instant cast. As a d/f ele player I very easily spot appropriate skills to 1) reflect 2) projectile destroy and 3) invuln though. Even on visual effect spamming classes (e.g. ele/engi/mesmer), this is very easy (with the exception of asura where they have the exact opposite problem of not having enough of a “tell”).

I’m not even close to unique in this regard. Any mid level duelist can do the exact same thing. The key is in playing every class or fighting them enough to learn to spot their tells. I learned by 1) dueling a lot and 2) playing every single class to 80 and then some in a pvp setting on multiple builds. This will allow you, even if the particle effects are super flashy, to spot virtually any tell in the game (again, there are exceptions and times where the environment can make it hard to spot tells e.g. mid point on legacy of foefire makes me unable to see things like mesmer pistol 5 because of the bright color).

Unfortunately, just honestly, it is really a l2p issue. It’s not impossible, you’re not physically restricted from doing it, you’re just not applying yourself enough it seems. You have valid points but overall I just don’t agree with your conclusion.

Agree with this as former Duelist – 2½ years, until the last balance patch made dueling either boring (join the cheesetrain) or annoying (fight the cheesetrain) with almost no middle ground – unless you find likeminded players, which are becoming more and more of a rarity these days (still doing it, but less frequently).

Of the people that i fought with i’ve never seen anyone not being able to recognize the Animations from their opponents, even if those would be Elementalists, Mesmers or Engineers. It may be a problem if players stack too many SFXes on top of each other (spamming Grenades and Special Bombs combined with my Red-Green Color Blindness can actually prevent me from seeing the red AoE Cyrcles when i stack on certain Bosses in Dungeons), but that doesn’t really happen in 1vs1.

When you duel someone, knowing their animations and being able to recognize them on the fly is mandatory (well.. actually there are builds out there that might carry a player incapable of doing so anyway) – so i think in your case it really just means that you got to train a bit more. Ranger might not be that useful in Zerging, and they might not be part of the Dungeon- or PvP Meta, but if there is one discipline, in which it really excels, it would be 1vs1

Lord Trejgon.2809:

(…)
also I can tell for myself that sometimes – and that was noticeable for me ESPECIALLY when playing on lower graphcial setting – combination of merely two or three skills was capable of generating amounts of particles totally obscuring the whole screen of the player – f.e. have you ever tried to play on lowest setting and cast on a mob in tight room guardians gs leap of faith directly followed by whirling wrath? while wielding cobalt on top of it?

I guarantee to you that in such situation you won’t be able to even see your own character – only one huge blue… something :P

Playing on lowest settings myself (including subsampling, lowest resolution and without screen stretching, meaning that my game literally shows me a small viewport surrounded by a black frame when i’am running it in fullscreen) – if a (most likely Medi)Guard teleports into you with a spinning Cobalt, visual effects should be the last thing to worry about :P

Afraid you will have to wait quite some time :P A-net seems to follow a 6 month-cycle if it comes to “balancing” stuff (the result of which may destroy any kind of balance even further, as the last big “balance update” showed), so i wouldn’t get my hopes up if i were you :p

Well, Drops really ARE a waste of time. Unless you’re the kind of player that finds multiple precursors despite almost never playing the game, of course (i get that there can be extreme deviations from the expected values – but how the hell can people get serveral precursors over one year from doing almost nothing!? And why are those guys not hit by lightning more often?).

Guild Wars 2 Loot can be summed up in one Word: Green.

• Killed someone and now there is a bag of loot at your feet? well, prepare for some ‘greens’ !
• Hey! It’s a Worldboss-Chest! guess what, prepare for even more ‘greens’!
• Wow, so you got an exotic champion-lootbag? Open it, and marvel at it’s green contents!
• So, you completly explored a Region? Here, take some greens, please!
• I see! You rose by another level in WvW? Awesome! Here is a green surprise for you!
• In the rare case of a Skrit-Thief Event, you may prepare for epic green loot!

Your Inventory will be filled by green loot. And if there isn’t a mercheant nearby, you’re forced to salvage them to make more place for possibly valuable loot (physicists deduced that such loot may theoretically exist, although they have yet to find it. We will have our answers once they finish building the great mystic forge collider). And when you salvage it, green loot has a nice chance to split up into almost-worthless materials and green sigils, leaving you with another piece of green occupying the slot in your inventory that you attempted to free anyway.

Really, Drops suck. I would completly ignore them if it weren’t for the fact that they cover my traveling cost. You can’t get rich from it, though – that requires good loot, and you only get that one from World Bosses, Dungeons (End chests) and Fractals. WvW only yields me greens (or Thorns/Spikes if i get lucky), and while PvE also stuffs my inventory with them, i can at least get some “goldies” there. TBH, whenever i need gold, i have to switch over to PvE and do Instances/WBosses for it. And the loot still sucks.

Where is RNGesus when you need him….

I think grenade barrage actually works with it if you trait grenades – can’t test it though since i don’t have one

Fixing Skill-based effects for legendary wielding engineers might pose a Problem though:

• Warriors could start Crying. And a-net doesn’t like Warriors crying. After all, noone wants to see their children crying, right? I mean, they can wield the Predator as well, and it would be sooo unfair if Engineers got more out of a legendary than they do. If they can’t have it, nobody should have it!
• If they fix some of the effects, Engineers could become entitled and demand even more of it (the horror!)
  • Just imagine the devs introducing more Effects for Quip. Then some Engineers could be angry over the fact that their flameseeker-prophecies might not grant them special effects. And if the latter one actually did grant such effects, a-net would have to decide which skills were influenced by the prophecies, and which one by quip (their decision might in turn might anger even more)
• some Players might be annoyed about changed visuals for their Kits & Co, and actually want it to be limited to the weapon itself. Maybe a-net didn’t want to alienate those players and took the effects away due to that (so that the legendary works for engis the same as for other classes).

I want to “craft” a Predator as well, and while i would love to see more legendary effects on engineer Kits (Kit-heavier builds spend quite some time in them anyway, which limits the “use” of legendary weapons) i’am actually pleased about the fact that the footsteps/aura aren’t as pronounced as in other legendarys. Tbh, i find all those glowy sparkly charr wielding other legendarys kinda ridiculous to look at :P

Would be nice if a-net coud add some more Effects and add one or two Drop Down Options for the legendarys (maybe a bar for regulating Footsteps and Aura, and an Option for activating additional effects on Kits and Utilities), but i doubt the devs will ever do such a thing, seeing as it would just cause more work and costs for them, AND kinda lead to inconsistency regarding legendary weapons (will they have to create new effects for other Classes as well? Also for all the other Legendarys? Or would the Option only make sense for one class? Why single it out? – seriously, if i develop a system, i hate iregularities, and i’am sure the devs at a-net do so as well :P)

My Feedback is a bit biased, due to the potato of a laptop that i use to play this game (meaning lowest settings, including subsample and lowest resolution – without stretching the screen, so i literally got some small viewport sorrounded by a large black frame when i play it in fullscreen).

• Attacking and destroying the Shield Blossom, Creature Spawners, Throwing Bombs, Building Catapults and killing Mordrem while the Spawners are up does not seem to grant you a stack after the Event is over. Tested this multiple times already, and never got something out of it. That makes it kinda unfair for those people that actually do the events as opposed to the “leechers” arriving at the last minute.
• So far only attacking the Mobs marked with Swords proved to grant me a stack after the Event is over. This, however, comes with a set of Problems:
  • The Mobs die too fast.
    • Chances are good that they spawn too far away from you (the event area is kinda large) → they die before you are in range.
    • The Terrain may induce tons of LoS issues. You can be almost in firing range, when your target suddenly decides to “dash” behind a hill or some Tree → they die before you can get off a hit.
    • For low-end-PC users: the models rarely get rendered, and even if they do, selecting it with the mouse becomes impossible due to all the green names and players bodyblocking them. TAB targeting tends to select [i]anything else (even with the mordremmob being directly in front of you), so it doesn’t work that way either.
• Well, low-end-PC-users are at a disatvantage here in general – the wide spread of those Events leads to frequent WPing, which leads to loading Screens. Many, Long loading Screens. Can’t hold that against a-net though, since it was MY decision to play the game on this computer.

The Rewards seemed to have been fixed though

Jekkt.6045:

Terrorsquad.4802:

Jekkt.6045:

“unrelenting assault is undodgeable” and yet i always double dodged/blocked/blinded it all the time. seriously you people that make posts like this just just don’t even care to learn how to counter a new class so you rather have it nerfed instead.

I wonder how one blinds something which is evading for 2s.
Even if possible, you can only blind 1 hit from the tons of hits it does.

If you call blocking and dodging “countering”, then thieves can counter Eles now?

if you blind during the casting time all hits miss. and i said counter the class, not the skill, or can you counter pistol whip and blurred frenzy when they’re evading?

It’s called Shocking Aura. Didn’t test it as of late, but if it wasn’t changed since the last time i’ve seen it, it should interrupt both Pistol Whip AND Blurred Frency – but as someone that was Ele for a kitten long time you probably know that :p In case of Pistol Whip you can also jump towards the Thief if you see his initial stunning hit incoming – you should keep your momentum in-Air (despite the Stun), and be able to avoid the vast majority of hits standing behind him while his Swords cuts the now empty space in front of him :p Blurred Frency itself isn’t that strong, and is used mostly for defensive purposes – since it roots, you might just avoid a few hits by walking outside it’s range (again, just possible due to forgiving damage modifier – walking out of a 100b for example can still have you take 5k+ damage if you are squishy). Or you single-dodge both skills (yes, unlike UA, dodging once will be enough to bring you out of the danger zone for those skills).

Just a quick look at those semi-similar Skills:

• Blurred Frency: (2.40) + Evasion + Self Rooting
• Pistol Whip: (3.33) + Evasion + Self Rooting
• Hundred Blades: (5.31) + Self Rooting
• Unrelenting Assault: (5.00) + Evasion + Gapcloser

To me it seems as if UA is like a glorified mix of Blurred Frency, Pistol Whip and Hundred Blades with an inbuilt Gapcloser. You could also call it a homing Hundred Blades Missile, if you want :P

mercury ranique.2170:

As usual, credits go to the person leading, not the person actually acting. Thats why Trahearne gets all the credits….

At least Trahearne did not become a god…

…. yet.

Or a Dragon. Maybe we will have to battle a weakened Elder Dragon with Trahearne tagging along (yes. just tagging along), and afterwards he will absorb it’s power and become the new Dragon of Order, Spirit and Truth

It is nice that you’re looking for dungeons with that Idea… but you know… WvW and PvP are part of Guild Wars, too. Most condition based builds out there are already pretty easy to play despite their great effectivity in small-scaled conflicts. While the last big “balance” update alreadykitten*ed up any resemblence of balance there was (on both, the power and the condi side), adding more damage to bleed would just further ruin any trace of balance left in this game.

Some classes can easily go up to 2k (or more) Condidamage – in which case one stack of bleeding would already do 142 damage per second – and with your change even one stack would tick for 264, and it would get much stronger the more Stacks you add. Just 5 Stacks of your version of bleeding would tick for as much damage as 25 Stacks of the current one (nope, actually more – with 2k condidamage you would get 3760 dmg/s, courtesy of the ² relationship between damage and stack size n in your formular) . Skills like the Warriors Fency (many Stacks of bleed with – until then – short duraions as outweighting factor) would become near the damage of Power-based Bursts, with the difference that you could go tanky, unlike your Power-Counterparts.

The second suggestion is more humane, but still rather annoying if Bleedspam (and yes, there are classes that can spam this pretty easily and with little effort) prolongs more annoying Conditions like Immobilization, Cripple, Chill or Confusion.

Just keep in mind that the changes you would like to see do not just impact lifeless Mobs in PvE – they might impact you as well

So… does anyone have a solution yet? Because i seriously can’t think of anything un-illegal (a hacker could probably temporarily “fix” the problem until the devs actually care, but that would probably lead to a ban anyway), and with all the “Screen goes black Underwater” Threads (which actually get Dev responses), this one is probably going to be ignored forever

+1 Same Bug for me.

Maybe we should change the Thread’s Title to something more PvE centric (World Boss not spawning!!!!!!) so that it gets some attention :P?

Same Problem. Game started in normal sampling (despite the options still displaying subsampling), and each switch of an instance reverts the mode back to normal sampling (without actualization of the menu entry, which still says “subsampling”) – actually, going underwater is causing the same issue (at least no black screen for me), which makes this kinda annoying :P

A Fix for the hardware-poor amongst us would be appreciated

Susanoo.2586:

Now I know I’m part of the minority here but as someone who has purchased Electro Blue and Electro Pink, two of the most expensive dyes, This new birthday present has made me pretty kitten angry. Why should someone get something that has equal value to that of a Precursor for free?

People know how much others are willing to pay to be “special snowflakes” – so they got themselves some Colors in hope to sell them months later for an overinflated price. Electric Blue costed about 100g once, and predictably rose to the current price of ~1000g over the months. it doesn’t even make sense to be angry about it – you could have bought it when it wasn’t worth as much as a precursor. Before buying them, you could have asked yourself the questions that most players would do:

“Might a-net reintroduce Taimi’s Dye Kit in a sale, causing the prices to temporarily plummet down again? Could there be another way for them to grant players access to it? Do i risk it and buy them to have them right now, even if it means that i might have payed way too much for it? Is it worth it ?”

If you thought about your purchase just for a moment, and concluded that it was worth the risk, then you should be ready to accept the consequences. If you didn’t think about it… well…

Granted they may not be truly worth the amount of gold they’re listed for… blah blah but they’re still a big ticket item, just as legendaries are, They’re something you can be proud of but this present has taken away all value.

Oh my, this is almost funny. No, not “may”. They are not truly worth the amound of gold they’re listed for. If you buy it, you only show the world that you were willing to risk paying 1000g for a color once worth 100g, for whatever reasons (which may be valid, if you just really like the color for example). But being proud of it ? It’s not like getting Electric Blue would require any kind of “skill” or something – u just need to grind yourself 1000g (which is mostly mind-numbing work anyway). All the value “taken away from it” was purerly artificial anyway – you already payed 800-900g too much for it on purpose, so why exactly would the remaining 100-200g bother you? Are you also bothered about the ones buying it for 100g from the TP? Or the ones getting it as drop from a Black Lions Chest “for free”?

In case you bought those two colors JUST because they were the most expensive( or: so that other players might look up to you) : No, nobody would stare in awe at you just because you bought two overpriced colors. Of course i hope that wasn’t your Intention, though.

A little off topic:
Just remember all those Monks in GW1… Obsidian Armor and Chaos Gloves. And since they had to dye their Armor with the two most expensive Colors (Black & White), you could pretty much define them by their Headpieces and the Color of their Gloves… Ughh… Simply the best example of what happens, if Players buy expensive things just to show that they bought the most expensive things

Niiiiice. Good to see this being fixed in the future

Attachment: Sacrified myself yesterday to get a nice Screenshot of another case (although it wasn’t really an outnumbered situation here)

Holy… just looked at the skills and.. wow. You know, i’ve been worried about how a-net didn’t buff their favorite class as of late (and almost thought they changed it), but now i know why :P

Hell, with that skillset the Warrior is going to be an unstoppable Murdering Machine – right now Warrior-Weaponsets have more heavy hitting/dangerous skills to doge than players can dodge, (which means that you either have to play something pretty overpowered, or try kite that CC-imprevious monstrosity, or hope for him to mess up multiple times – which happens quite often, fortunately. Seriously, stop using Eviscerate from 600 range!), but when those changes hit, it’s going to be even more.

My favorite: 2 Second Taunt (knowing a-net, this will ignore active Defenses like attack-based Evades and Blocks just as the Ranger one) with 6 Stacks bleeding for 13½ seconds base. I always liked how Warrior Condidurations were absurdly high (don’t forget that they get +33% duration from a Minor Trait as well, if they chose the Arms Line) compared to the frequency with which they can apply them, and i’am “happy” to see that a-net attempts to keep it that way…

Well, seems like i actually have to use the new overbuffed Traits of my mainclass that i’ve been avoiding so far, once the next beta-Weekend arrives. It may be boring with them, but i guess it’s still better than running away screaming like a little girl whenever i encounter a Warrior 2.0 rolling his face over the Keyboard

Ohh… i like this

More Bandwaggoners inbound

Pay to Win

Nexon’s favourite Goldmine

PaxTheGreatOne.9472:

Im my mind a few options appear.

Make a ballista and shoot it while it’s being build? Yes there are corners where you cannot hit them I know.

If an Arrowcart is being built SO FAR away from the edge of a Towers wall, that a ballista can hit it, it won’t be able to clear out much of the Siege anyway (if any at all). The Problem are AC’s which are built in Corners, or in case of some Towers even on the Wall’s “feet” (dunno how to describe it)! An AC built like that can’t be hit even by a ballista built on the edge of a Wall, and neither by the majority of the classes Weapon-based Attacks (due to LoS issues at that angle), unless they are jumping for- and backwards during their attack channels. And don’t forget that this is regularily used by numerically superior attackers against few Defenders Last time i’ve seen it being used, there were like 3 dedicated Defenders in a Tower, with 40+ bad Zerglings rushing at the gates – they didn’t even try taking out the oil/cannons first, lost all their first rams and some people to those and AC Fire, and did what? Exactly! Flashbuilt 2 SAC’s at Places where the Wall absolutely destroys the Defenders LoS, and just destroy the Siege AND the Defenders inside the tower… Defenders couldn’t so much, since they had to get a clear LoS on the Siege, which was hardly possible due to the placement, and outright impossible with a Blobb spamming AoE on the Wall in question. Was really rooting for the Defending Side, but i guess in the End it’s the blobb that’s gonna win – no matter how (in)competent the players composing it are.

That’s also the experience and skill of the commanders/ players…

Considering how even those players managed to do so, i’am not entirely sure if Flashbuilding AC’s on such locations would require any kind of “skill” (it’s not even experience – simply use your brain to find the place that is best Protected by LoS issues and you’re good).

If they put it close to the wall you should be able to hit it with normal AOE’s, and if you’re not completely glass you could hit and susain yourself enough to kill it

You could disable it? get 20 supply on you and you could disable twice, while calling the zerg/ defsquad… If you have no other players, you should understand you are in a bad spot if you are alone…

In a blobb vs few scenario? Nope, not even Soldier Armor is going to save your hide long enough. If your Soldier Ele/Engi even gets to the edge of the wall (through all those Necro Wells, Marks and Meteor Showers), you probably have enough HP left to life for what.. another 1-2 Seconds? And thats just if the Zerg down there is very bad :p

To the Siege disabler thing: Yes, currently the only real way to “counter” this “tactic”

Making all siege unhittable will make for 6 or 8 ac’s above each door again not allowing any caps in the last 6 days of play and or have people just treb the map to their color. it will make the game just waiting till the trebs killed the wall and moving in. completely destroying any PvP involvement, as defenders would most likely give up when the wall goes down.

TBH, i would rather have bad Zerglings wait longer for the Walls to break, than having them abuse the AC to clear out the Defenders. I mean “destroying any PvP involvement”? I don’t think giving up by dying-in-attackers-AC-Fire-covering-the-whole-tower is in any way different than giving up when the Wall breaks – except for the fact that bad zerglings aren’t rewarded with loot in the second case :P

Well, actually there IS a counter to those AC’s, but it requires a rather large Amount of scepter Eles (and a target caller) to work. Although i would really like to see that nerfed as well – there was a reason, why Mesmer Phantasms where nerfed back then, and i still don’t get why they didn’t give Dragons Tooth the same Treatment (cause it is just as Toxic as AC’s when used from the blobb in a blobb vs few Situation)

Curunen.8729:

I’d made a pretty long post on the subject of fun and maximising build efficiency for the sake of winning but the kittening forum decided to eat it… >:(

I can’t be kittened to retype it so I’ll try a tl;dr version.

- primary in game goals are a compromise between playing to win and playing to have fun.
- you can only control your own build choice based on the two parameters stated above.
- other players can do whatever they like in the confines of the game

Example – I find using PU, Scepter+Torch in condition play to be extremely boring – I’d rather go and do paperwork than play like this. Hence my preference for Sword/torch and no PU. However the fact that other players can choose this trait and weapon combo is their choice in the compromise between"playing for fun" and “playing to win”. I do not criticise them because I decided to choose a “weaker” build that strikes the balance for me between fun and winning.

Yes! YES! Finally someone got it right! Give this man a medal!
edit: although to some, “playing to win” may be equivalent to “playing for fun” – guess you could classify people by how far they can move-away/have-to-move-away from “playing to win” in order to have fun :p

Jugglemonkey.8741:

Not flaming, simply a curious thief here.

Is it possible to make a PU mesmer that uses the new spec for an obscene amount of stealth, and still do good damage?

Just wondering how much I should give up on thief and just play mesmer, considering the amount of flak thieves catch for perma stealth etc.

Well, pre-patch PU Mesmers were hated by most players (me included, i really don’t like seeing it unless i know the player using it needs it for practise), but at least they had an actual weakness in form of a lack of Stopping Power (Neither Power PU nor Condi PU had that), so you could pretty much just walk away when encountering them.

Well, that just changed with the Patch. Not only did A-net double the stealth Duration for some reason (they were probably only looking at PvE – like always, or some a-net dev thought playing PU builds was too unforgiving) – due to the Powercreep and the kinda overbuffed Traits, PU builds (doesn’t matter if Condi PU, Condi PU shatter or PU power shatter) actually got stopping power, the latter two comparable to that of an oldschool shatter pre-patch. And don’t forget the bugged Torch trait, which enables PU Mesmers to easily Hide in Keeps regardless the dozens of players looking for him :P

So thats a big “yes” to your first Question, although the damage might be a little lower than you are used to from you (probably) D/P Thief post-patch. Still, if the reason for you changing to mesmer is

Just wondering how much I should give up on thief and just play mesmer, considering the amount of flak thieves catch for perma stealth etc.

, then don’t, because honestly, PU Mesmers right now are pretty similar in that regard.
Hell, i refuse to run any of those overbuffed traits, and people still complain about me (ab)using too much “stelts and kitten clones” despite wielding no torch (meaning i’am limited to Decoy and MI), so if anything, you will get more Flak than before :P

Coarr.3286:

Questular.8359:

Vaanss is an awesome warrior roamer imo (EU)

awesome in running away and adding into duels. never lost a single 1on1 to him on my ranger

I think i found the reason why you never lost to him

Not sure how it is in other Tiers, but here in Bronze Tier i mostly meet 2-5 playercells ganking on single players, and IF i actually find people “roaming” alone, it’s always someone using whatever cheesebuild he/she could find. A Ranking of “Top Roamers” could (if other Tiers are facing the same situation) be summed up as “Whoever runs the greatest cheese” right now – at least if measured by “success” when roaming.

Iavra.8510:

Roaming is still alive. I die a lot to 4-5 mesmer/thief groups, but those are so bad that i often can either escape or kill a few before dying, so that’s fine for me.

Regarding PU: I would run CI, which is more fun, but i need the survivability, especially against other PU mesmers. They can nerf PU and CS, i would welcome it, but as long as that doesn’t happen don’t blame me for using it.

A [BNF] using PU? And there i thought Nubu would hide under your bed at night, if you took that trait? Well, i will keep being the one Mesmer not taking any of those overbuffed traits, no matter how much it puts me at a disadvantage. Although that doesn’t seem to prevent angry people from confusing my no-Torch/no-Staff shatter with condi-PU…

Arctisavange.7260:

Originaly it was stated that the new map will be in rotation with old bl maps. Latest news says it will entirely replace bl maps. Why is that????

Testing it for a longer period of time i guess. Beta Tests are good, but they won’t be enough to find all the bugs/problems with a map. They will probably go back to rotating it after seeing how good/bad the resonance within the community is.

- let’s just hope the Rotation won’t work as the current PvP Daily for winning a game on certain classes…. With the Alpine Borderland being the Mesmer

Arantheal.7396:

(…)

Further reasons:
- Pseudo released open beta, to check stability, gain feedback from the whole community and actively improve / rework stuff in the first couple of months.
- Because the Alpine Borderland currently is a buggy mess, and would let a-net look bad to new customers.
- Because the Alpine Borderland currently is a buggy mess, and needs a complete overhaul before it comes back into the game.
(…)

Kinda confused about that one. During the time i’ve played the game (which is mostly WvW) i’ve never been stuck inside something once (except from Mesmer-Teleports, which did not have anything to do with the map itself), and i’ve never seen anyone use exploits within the EU Matchups i participated in – although i never tried finding any, so i guess there could be glitches into Towers/Keeps. What bugs are you referring to?

- The new borderland will feature complete new mechanics and maybe shift the meta, therefore having the same map everywhere helps to settle the new meta for all Servers.

As far as i can see, it will also bring a piece of EotM into “real” WvW, despite the obvious disdain displayed by most players here towards EotM (yeah yeah, this Forum is only the “vocal minority”, thanks devs!) – namely, putting in more PvE Elements and kitten artificial advantages imbalancing the fight for capping certain Elements on the Map.

Hidden reason:
- Many MMO’s feature WvW-like content now, so GW2 tries to refresh the game-mode with new ideas, to get better reviews. Currently WvW in GW2 is overall perceived with mixed feelings, especially since there are many games who offer similar / better large-scale PvP. A-net simply tries to get that little something back which will make GW2 to the unique experience again which it was to the time of its launch 3 years ago, more so because WvW back then was one of its main selling-points.
The Industry finally did catch up…

Yeah, i could see a-net thinking that way. Screw the WvW-Players (excluding EotMers here), better lure new ones to GW Honestly, i think if i were a beginner, and had never experienced the current, barely PvEish Maps, i would probably like EotM-Style maps; the concept isn’t that bad, it’s just that many of us got used to WvW being a place where we can simply fight other players without having to worry much about PvEBonuses or NPC’s – and prefer it that way.

In fact, i think the new Map’s Design looks stunning and far more interesting than the current, rather plain Borderland – but all the PvE stuff will probably lead to me limiting myself to EB instead. While i like the vertical design quite much, it also heavily favors the current heavy Professions, which have a “fire and forget” access to stability and nice knockbacks at the same time (guess i will not attempt to pass a bridge with a melee train on it, even with the “nerf” to stability. Not wanting a Guardian Hammer to my face)…then again, pulling/pushing people of edges might be fun >:D

That Bush has been there since i started playing more than 2 years ago – another one like that should be located slightly south to the Crossing-Waypoint (i’am pretty sure there are more of them, but i don’t pay much attention to the vegetation :P)

Drakortha.6974:

no only real, fair, balanced classes. warrior, guardian, ranger, engineer..

Please create yourself an “unfair” Mesmer and get yourself a Shatterbuild. We can search ourselves an empty server, then you can pit your Mesmer against my LB Pew Pew Ranger. I Gurantee you that you willl lose every single duel

I would really like to know if OP actually has a Mesmer amongst his Characters…

Lag really got a lot worse as of late – even in Obsidian Sanctum, where there are 3-4 people maximum in my matchup (yeah, pretty deserted), my client frequently experiences lagspikes (like a 5 second delay between Buttonpress and Weaponswap).

This is almost nonexistent on PvE maps for me, and seems to be limited to GW2 in general.

Edit: i also wonder what the Ping/Average Ping in the UI is supposed to say. If i were to believe it, i would have an average ping of 60-70, which definetly isn’t true. Yesterday i saw a ranger between Anza and Speldan, tried avoiding him by swimming into the lake, and just as i passed under the bridge between mendons and red’s mainkeep, i suddenly found myself in downed state between Anza and Speldan again. Thats easily more than 15,000 Ingame Units away. Couldn’t fire any abilitys either (and people kept “porting around” and/or running in straight lines – typical lagspike effects), all while the Options claimed my Ping to be around 60-70 o_ô

Drakortha.6974:

these 2 classes both include the tools necessary to cheat, troll, and fleece your way to victory, every time.

Cheat? Obviously not. Troll? Well, PU Condimesmers and most Thieves can do this. Fleece? If you can’t do that yourself despite playing a Ranger urself, you should try to get better at playing your class of choice.

Special abilities of the thief include;
vanishing without a trace whenever and wherever you want.

You might need a target, but Hunter’s Shot still let’s you vanish quite frequently, especially with AI near.

teleporting long distances across the map, escaping any face off ever
knifing enemies while invisible.

You might not be able to teleport, but you can easily escape using your Greatsword/Sword. Of course this would need you to learn how to play your Ranger properly.

one hit kills

cough Longbow against Squishys cough.

super fast attack speeds and movement, while other players have obvious tells & slow movement. ++ if you’re an asura.
finishing your enemies while completely invisible, rendering all 4 of their downed abilities useless.

Again, Hunter’s Shot. You should really learn more about your Class before attacking Thieves/Mesmers that way Hunter’s shot has a rather short Cooldown – it’s essentially the initiative-less ranged version of Cloak and Dagger, and just as useful for finishing foes.

troll your enemies with your special “woosh woosh, stab stab” sound.

not sure what to say to that…

Special abilities of mesmer;
your own personal zerg!

Can’t really take that seriously. Sounds like a sentence we all heared very often when the game was still new (and filled with new players with barely any combat experience). Why don’t you play Mesmer yourself for once, and see if your “personal Zerg” keeps up with 3 people. Or even one

troll your enemies with an absurd amount of visual effects, effectively “blinding” the player from their own interface.

Not bothering with the fact that your UI is always rendered on top of the Gamescene itself you shouldn’t be blinded. But if you manage to get distracted by some visual effects, your problem is far greater anyway – try to concentrate on the important elements (enemy position, enemy health, casting animations) rather than letting SFX’s take your attention away from it

teleporting across the map at any time

Across the map? The Maximum Teleport Range would be 6000 units (via “Portal”, or 5000 units in PvE/WvW for whatever reason), which needs to be setup first, has a 90s Cooldown (after the exit disappeared), and needs about 2 seconds to be usable after the exit was put down. Other than that you’re left with a 30s Teleport on 900 Range (although traitable), which doesn’t really count as “across the map” either (and pretty much not “at any time”).

going invisible during fights at a whim. teleporting up to areas your foes cannot reach
annoying “whirrr whirrr, whirrr whirrr” sounds included!

A Standard Shattermesmer equipped with Decoy and Mass Invisibility (let’s just assume his Decoy would have a 30s Cooldown to make it easier) would have a maximum Stealth uptime of 16%. Your Longbow ranger with untraited Longbow could get a maximum of 25% by shooting Hunter’s shoot at the Mesmer’s Clones (easily doable since Clones do not attemt to strafe/dodge it) or even up to 31% stealth uptime when traited. Even if you miss a few shots or stay a bit too long in your other weaponset, your stealth uptime would still be higher.

The teleporting issue is debateable – some like it, some hate it, so i won’t comment on that. Regarding the “whirr whirr whirr whirr” sounds: The Greatsword once had a better Sound effect, but a-net one day broke it with a patch (they like to do that with Mesmers). After much asking around from Mesmers when this was finally going to be fixed, a dev even answered that they were going to do it. Of course (like like to do that with Mesmers) it hasn’t been touched ever since then. Although i’am not sure why you would write such a point into you list (unless you were running out of ideas)

cheap is still cheap

cough (2|0|6|6|0) Longbow Duelist setup cough

… You can combine [Shadow Refuge] with [Melandru’s Avatar] to set up [Binding Roots] out of Stealth – if your opponent doesn’t die from boredom before, leaves your range during the astronomical cast or random dodges it.

It’s more of a trolling combination than a useful one (and inferior to Rangers ‘Rektangle’ in almost every way), but just too funny if it works out and totally surprises someone

Necromorph Thread.

Oh well, there are two newer answers here already, guess i can give it an [Illusion of Life] as well

Problem about giving thieves Initiative Skills a honest Cooldown is the guranteed massive QQ that follows (“I CANT HEARTSEEKAAH THROUGH MY SMOKEFIEALLD!!!1! WHY CND ON COOLDOWN THATS OP NERF MESMAH THIEF ALWAYS NERFED NOW MES HARDCOUNTER THIEFCLASS Q_Q”).

In all seriousness, maybe we would have to alter the effect a little regarding Initiative Skills. Instead of setting the interrupted Skill on a set 10 second Cooldown, they could for example

• increase the amount of required Initiative for said skill by another X% of it’s original value for the next 10 seconds following the Interrupt. This way, since the higher iniative-value has to be paid before the skill gets executed, it effectively works as a 10s cooldown as long as the Thief doesn’t have the majority of his Initiative still avaiable. Thieves would have to pay a price for being interrupted, but could still use the Skill depending on their initiative-managment.
• for the next 10 seconds following the interrupt, leave the original Initiative cost of the interrupted skill unchanged, but make the Thief lose additional Initiative after activating it. The main diference to the first idea would be the fact that he can still use the skill at least one time if he got the originally required amount of initiative. There could even be a penalty mechanic added to this, triggering a punishing effect whenever a Thief using the skill affected by Power Block gets down to 0 Initiative by using it.

If OP feels that Condimancer’s feel weak in small scale, and – even worse – thinks they are “challenging” to play, then i don’t even know what to say… except… it’s too late to save him anymore.

… Unless he’s a troll, in which case he’s a kitten good one!

Lordrosicky.5813:

Now mesmer has always had too high damage but it does have weaknesses to thief.

However, if they implement my thief nerfs then there is no reason to not nerf the mesmer.

My ideas:
1, Remove ability for mesmers to cancel cast their greatsword auto attack

So that the 1.4 seconds long channel (that’s more time than Killshot or Spinal Shivers need to be cast, mind you!) becomes a death trap to Squishy Mesmers which cannot really facetank hits as well as your two classes (namely Warrior and Necromancer)? Unless you deliberately go tanky, in which case the Greatsword Autoattack is laughable dps wise.
Also here some Comparisons of damage-over-time Values of some Ranged Autoattacks, measured by the Quotient (Damage_modifier / Casting_Time)

• Deathly Claws (Lich): (1.72)
• Rending Claws: (0.73)
• Life Blast
  • (0.73) (600,1200]
  • (1.4) [0,600]
• Necrotic Grasp: (0.48)
• Long Range Shot
  • (0.9) if Distance 1000+
  • (0.8) if Distance between 500 and 1000
  • (0.7) if Distance 0 and 500
• Crossfire: (0.74)
• Hip Shot: (0.77)
• Orb of Wrath: (0.83)
• Wave of Wrath: (0.6)
• Fireball: (061)
• Trick Shot: (0.57)
  • with second foe adjacent to Target: (1.15)
• Spatial Surge
  • (0.68) if distance >900
  • (0.58) if distance between 600 and 900
  • (048) if distance between 300 and 600
  • (0.38) if distance between 0 and 300

yeah, sure, Spatial Surge is totally Overpowered. Never mind that a tanky foe with Retaliation is usually going to hit you for 60-80% of you own damage in Form of Retaliation (since it’s damage is spread over 3 physical hits), or that it is – in terms of damage – actually pretty mediocre among Power-based ranged Attacks.

2, Reduce the damage from a shatter by 5%

Sure, do the same to all the other bursts dealing comparable damage for blowing 1-2 abilities

3, Make that stupid illusionary berkzerker thing do 10% less damage

Currently, iZerker does have a damage Modifier of (2.2) on a per-default 20s Cooldown. Compare it to the ability it copys, namely your casual Warrior’s Whirlwind Attack, which comes with a Modifier of (2.67) on a per-default 10s Cooldown; even with in-built evasion on it. That’s 21% more damage on half the Cooldown. And if you play Powernekro or Powerwarrior, you shouldn’t let it live long enough to strike you a second time – you got 7 seconds time to kill it after it spawned – if you didn’t already blind/interrupt the Mesmer itself when he attempted casting it, you could use your Whirlwind Attack to kill it without being damaged (your’s evades – the imitation’s does not).

4, Add kitten icd to deceptive evasion

I would love to see you fighting a Mediguard on Shatter. Even with DE, you barely have enough Illusions to use for Shattering due to the fact that the heavy-armor wearing Madman just oneshots them with his cleaving Attacks while running after you. This is even worse in WvW, where people do much more damage than in PvP (while clone health is the same for both Modi). There is a reason why Shattermesmers are pidgeonhold into traiting at least 4 Points into the Dueling Line - without it, there simply isn’t enough to shatter. Also keep in mind that DE forces the squishy Shattermesmer to sacrifice his dodges for offensive Strength. Usually you got 2 evade every 20 seconds – with 50% Vigor Uptime (Mesmer Trait) it becomes 3 evades (~3 clones) every 20 seconds, which is similar to an internal Cooldown of 6.67 seconds. That doesn’t seem overpowered to me, given how fragile those clones are on common Shatterbuilds (if you dodge while being attacked – you know, since Shattermesmers tend to be quite squishy, unlike your Warrior/Necro – the attack you dodged may hit the Clone instead, killing it in the process).

5, Increase icd of critical infusion to 20 seconds

Sure, what about the other traits giving Vigor as well? Like Renewing Stamina from the Elementalist, whose internal Cooldown is as high as the Boonuptime (5 seconds) – unlike the Vigor created by Critical Infusion, which only lasts half as long as the internal Cooldown is. Or look at Vigorous Precision, which is a carbon Copy of Critical Infusion, but on a class which is per default more durable?

Ofc i’am against nerfing those traits, just as i’am against nerfing Critical Infusion (which was already nerfed once by the way).

I am NOT saying they should do ALL these things. 3 or 4 out of the 5 would be FINE. I wouldn’t want to overnerf mesmer.

I guess you want to break it just so far that even you can still beat them without having to think too much ?

TyPin.9860:

Had an idea for a new Elite. Here it goes:

Phantasm Form:

• Transform into a Phantasm (visually)

Having that effect would be awesome

• clone production disabled (however, you cans till summon phantasms)

Okay, so it’s mostly incompatible with any kind of dedicated shatterbuild (which requires clones on-demand, as well as condibuilds relying on clone production), but will be useful for Phantasm Builds – well, you called it “Phantasm Form” for a reason, i guess

• you gain all benefits from equipped traits, which are directly associated with phantasms or illusions
  (…)
• Phantasmal Haste will reduce skill cool downs by a set percentage (except for the elite itself)

which means you would be able to “tripple”-trait your Phantasm. -20% points for a traited Weapon, another -20% points in case you’re using Illusionists Celerity (you only mentiond how it wouldn’t impact the elite skill itself, which seems to be redundant information since a Transformation skill doesn’t count as Illusion Summon anyway), and finally another -20% points due to Phantasmal Haste (if traited), which would affect your skills while under influence of “Phantasm Form”. That would be 8 second Cooldown for iZerk, iDuelist or iSwordsman, which seems a bit strong IMO (even if it rarely happens for a Phantasm build to actually use all 3 traits at the same time).

Also think of the flat out +30% damage due to traits. Since your Elite-Form would effectively let you count as an Illusion, you would not only do the usual insane damage done by Phantasm Builds, but could actually Shatter 3 Phants (or whatever Clones were still standing from before you activated the Form) plus yourself, which leaves you with a better mindwrack than a dedicated Shatter traiting both Illusionary Persona and Mental Torment, without actually having to rely on shatters – just by using a Phantasm Build, which tends to be more tankier (not really an option for Power Shatter) and forgiving in the first place.

• You will count as an illusion for Ether Feast, Signet of the Ether or shatters

That actually makes it superior to IP - until the Form runs out of time, at least.

All in All i think the elite is – while being a very nice concept ! – a little too specialized in favour of one special category of Builds; Namely Phantasm Builds, which are already quite strong IMO. Would be nice if a new Elite would be more useful to every style avaiable – Time Bubble is equally Bad for all Builds (basically only usable in PvE, very few Situations in WvW, and only against really bad Opponents in Player vs Player Situations), Mass Invisibility is useful for every kind of Build we have (getting more breathing Room is always a good thing), and Moa… well, this is clearly a Troll Skill, so i won’t comment on that

I couldn’t care less if someone else used a Macro for playing or not.

What i do care about are stupid people accusing others of using macros, just because they can’t wrap their tiny minds around the fact that someone may actually be able to manually play the instruments the way they hear it. Saw this happen multiple times to people which clearly weren’t using macros; they were being verbally attacked, just because the attackers couldn’t imagine playing like that on their own – it makes me wonder what those people think if they see a musician in real life “uhh! Stop using Macros, pianist! you lifeless n00b!!!! Why u use Macro an guitar!! Learn to play u talentless sc**!!!”

I nominate Coulter as [anti-censoring-block] Shatter-Specialist. And Coulter, don’t you dare resist this – i swear i will send you a life long abo of Griften-PewPew if you do!

Blair.3796:

Oh no, I might not be able to use Blink to move my Mesmer around slightly faster!

Oh no, I can’t teleport cheese in PvP!

• Blink is a ground target spell. Those won’t activate anyway when your “target” (the location you are aiming your cursor at) is out of range.
• For a slow class like a Mesmer using Blink for more movementspeed out of combat is really useful. Your Swiftness stacking Guardian-Staff is still useful in WvW, a Focus wielding Mesmer (which doesn’t even add to existing swiftness) is a joke. And thanks to all the critters in WvW, Flashing Blade and Judge’s Intervention (don’t forget the Greatsword leap either) make the Guardian still a faster class than the Mesmer is right now.

Nah, don’t care. I main a Guardian and our meditations have always required targeting. No free Blinks and teleports for us.

• Judge’s Intervention and Flashing Blade require “real” targets (other entities) to work. Currently they work even if your foe is out of range, and simply teleport you as far into their direction as they can, which is “abused” (if you want to see it that way – i don’t) regulary by WvW Roamers; same goes for Thieves Infiltrator’s Strike and the signet, or Mesmers Swap (which is practically unusable for mobility) and Phase retreat (although this teleports backwards/away from your target, and can be used without a target).Those are the abilities being nerfed, not mesmer’s Blink.

Welcome to the club. Time to OOC move just like every other class.

• Well, if all classes get the same kind of passive defense and mobility, sure :p

The alternate-fire abilities are obviously not meant to be used as damage-skills; Both are “useful” in their own way. You can’t block a Killshot coming from a Warrior using Signet of Might – but you can blind or daze him before he fires it. The Sworddaze lets you interrupt abilities with higher casting times/channels, which might be – depending on the Situation – even better than the block with damage and clone generation. Desperate Mesmer trying to hide with Mass Invis? Ruin his day with a [Counter Blade]. Stability-less foe trying to stomp your ally a second time? [Counter Blade] him! Really bad D/P Thief attemting to create a smoke field? Not with [Counter Blade]. It’s also quite funny to use against Warriors who [Rush] you without stability; or Pew Pew Rangers without RaO. It also synergizes well with ‘Dazzling’ (5 stacks vulnerability on demand) and ‘Halting Strike’.

I Agree that they could use some buffs, but personally i don’t think they need to look at the damage part here. What bothers me right now:

• The Delay between successfull block and countereffect is too high.You can hit the block first, then the Mesmer himself, and still have time to dodge the Countereffect afterwards. A Mace Warrior can mindlessly hit into your Block and simply Daze you afterwards, which negates your Countereffect. Or even more ridiculous – he can counter your Block with his own Blocks. While the delay allows for counterplay (usually something i prefer), it shouldn’t be this much. I would like this ability to get the [Counter Attack] (Ranger Greatsword Block) treatment in this regard.
• Your Character attempts to cast the countereffect regardless of range. Ranger- and Warriorblocks can be used to block ranged attacks continueously, since the blocking character only initiates the counter cast when the attacker is actually in Range. Well, our block’s countereffect has a rather high range (900 units), but it also seems to prompt an attempt at casting it when i’am attacked by 1800-range-longbow rangers from far outside blink-range. Would be nice if our blocks would behave more like the others.
• The ¾s casting time of [Counter Blade] is a bit too much IMO - sure, it is a daze on a relatively low cooldown, but it’s projectile is sluggish as hell and easy to strafe. ¾ seconds make interrupting all but the most time-intensive casts impossible (unless your opponent is very predictable). Would be nice if they reduced it to ½ seconds - that shouldn’t make it too overpowered (i mean, look at [Launch Personal Battering Ram] – 15 seconds (or 11½ with enough traitpoints) cooldown, ¼ seconds casting time, 1 second Daze and a rather big damage multiplier of (1.5) on top of 5 seconds of cripple).

cheshader.5081:

phirefox.2568:

(…)

Had all those things generated requests from players to toggle them off? If yes, give me the links, please.

The Sarcasm must have eluded you when you read that first part of the post. Thought that much was obvious (the issues of text-based-communication.. ) If you read further, you come to

(…)
On the serious side though, (…)

which was intended to hint at it. The Opinion that a dev should implement a specific option to someones specific tastes seems so ridiculous, that i just threw in all my equally ridiculous demands (and some i just made up for fun) – if you want, i can go and create a topic requesting the devs to give me a toggle to turn all those things off, and give you the link afterwards. I could also get some of my guildies/ingame friends, (a majority of which hate the big norn-wielding-legendary-greatswords stereotype, including the Leg-GS-Skins themselves) to create a similar topic, if you want links as in plural. Really, there are a bunch of things that i (and others) don’t want to see ingame; we simply don’t feel entitled enough to start a topic for it – implementing those changes would take time from devs (which could be used for more pressing matters), and if we go and block Skins that annoy us, then please with equal treatment across the board.
Also (albeit for more practical reasons) a link regarding SFX-Clutter and huge Backpacks (which fits most of the Backpacks on my list): https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Add-option-to-switch-off-graphical-junk

phirefox.2568:

(…)why exactly the backpack in Question? Why not another one?(…)

Because ppl never asked to toggle off other backpacks?

So if i ask a-net something ridiculous like banning you because i don’t like your character (don’t take this seriously, just think of some ridiculous reason), is that actually a reason for them to do so ? Like, some non-preference-related reason ?

Immortal.3647:

can we have such an option please ?

While they’re at it, allow us to toggle off:

• Norn
• Fractal Capacitors
• Twilight
• Sunrise
• Eternity
• ugly Asurans (nonugly ones are okay)
• Quip
• The Dreamer
• all kinds of Spinal Blades
• Wings with stupid static Animations (Holographic Wings and Tequatl Wings)
• Scelerite Karka Shell
• The bulky new Crafting-Discipline-Backpacks
• Job-o-Tron
• Slick Pack
• Zephyr Rucksack (a.k.a non-engineer Hobosack)
• Anti Toxin Injector

i meant on other players cause they are kittening ugly and 1 out of 2 players is wearing this crap

You mean like Norn (wearing,wielding) (Fractal Capacitors,Legendary Greatswords)?

On the serious side though, while i understand why you would want to be able to turn them off, there are little chances of the devs giving you an option specifically for Black Wing Backpacks (if you meant it that way):

• It’s too specific. If i were a dev (i’am at best a hobby programmer though, not a developer), i would hate to add an option specifically for one specific kind of backpack – what would justify one single backpack bloating the Options UI further, and why exactly the backpack in Question? Why not another one? Is there a non-preference-related reason to do so? Or does it all come down to the personal opinion of a few Players?. Either you do it right, or you don’t do it at all, since half-a** solutions might come back to bite you later.
  • One possibility would be to generalize the Problem – instead of the very specific Option to hide “Black Feather Wings”, you would instead give an Option do hide every Backpack in general. This is what they did with Musical Instruments – instead of giving you an Option to adjust Trumpet Volume (which would be the musical equivalent of what you’re asking for the Backpack), they just added Volume Control for Instruments in General, regardless of the (Sub)Type.
  • Another possibility is to allow for hiding not only one specific backpack, but instead each one of them. Meaning every (Sub)Type of Backpack gets it’s own Toggle. Probably more work; it would most likely also take more space in Options UI.
  • Combine the first two Options
• Gemshop Sells might be negatively affected by the chance. I guess it can’t be argued that some players buy the Skins to show them off to others (regardless wether those others like to see it or not – for them it’s the thought of being seen that counts), which means either money for a-net ($/€>Gems) or at least provides an effective Gold Sink(Gold>Gems); if players were able to deactive it, there would be no reason for show-offs to buy them. Yes, there are players (like you) who don’t like to see those skins, but i also bet the fraction of players actually willing to leave the game for that reason is much smaller (and by extension less profitable) than the fraction of players buying Skins to show them off. Not really a reason for a-net to “waste” developing time for a toggle-Option.

Telly.4962:

Prysin.8542:

(…)

Please don’t bring your Ranger to a Roaming Server, T6-T8, because I hate watching people rage quit. Those utility bot Mesmers almost always beats a Ranger, as well as Thieves, where I play.

You want to tell me that your rangers/thieves are so incredibly bad, that they manage to lose against a Mesmer equipped with [Potal], [Veil] and at most one Stunbreak? Probably with Focus on one Weaponset as well? Kitten, your Thief/Ranger Roamers must be the worst i’ve ever heard of (o_ô) Might telling what exactly the names of the Servers you meant are?

i can’t speak for the community, so i will speak for myself:

no.

Personally i think the stealth uptime of [Decoy]&[Mass Invis] and maybe [Prestige] as well (as long as it isn’t coupled with PU) is more than adequate. I would like to avoid the mesmer becoming a (albeit weaker) “D/P Thief 2.0” (or every-thief-with-offhand-dagger-against-AI-classes 2.0)

Field of the Mists

“Create a field from the Mists that blocks incoming projectiles in front of you.”

• Again, this is brand-new, shiny tech. This skill creates a directional wall in front of your character, blocking incoming projectiles. Even better, it follows your character! While it’s active, the wall will always be in front of your character, moving around with you to protect you from those pesky rangers (unless they flank you).

When i read that, this came into my mind immediately:

Mask: Phoenix Armorset (Gemstore)
Shoulders:Carapace Armorset (you get this for free from a Living Story Mission)
Gloves: Winged Armorset (search Black Lions Post)
Chest: Seer Armorset (search Black Lions Post)
Legs: Carapace Armorset (think you have to grind for this one -> Silverwastes)
Shoes: Zodiac Armorset (Gemstore)

Edit: Xyonon is right, the shoes were Zodiac, not Carapace. Corrected it!

serenke.4806:

Amir.1570:

Neptune.2570:

Thief is the single, undisputed, hardest class to make effective at high tier pvp. Fact.

Fixed.

If by hard you mean baiting dodges with Phantasms and then instant-cast shattering people after they don’t have anymore endurance while spamming evades and invuln as you do so is hard then it just shows how much you know.

Ranger is easier than Mesmer, but Mesmer is still pretty easy. There are harder specs in this game, specs that take real skill. Even Thief is more skill-based than Mesmer really but I guess it’s just hard to understand that just because you play a Mesmer.

You Sir are quite deluded.

Yes. For a good laugh, take a look at his post history. He’s either a total troll, or totally clueless

What species/gender is your mesmer, Keegan?

Warshade.2984:

Correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems like several people have the wrong idea about the change in the rate of fire for the iMage.

• Phantasmal Mage: The illusionary mage summoned by this skill now applies 4 stacks of confusion instead of 3 with their attack. The duration of the confusion has been increased from 3 seconds to 4 seconds. The illusionary mage’s rate of fire has been reduced by 1 second.

For example, if the RoF was 1 attack every 5 seconds, wouldn’t reducing the RoF by 1 second thus mean 1 attack every 4 seconds? That’s how I’m reading it anyway. (Not that this matters much, as the projectile never seems to hit anyway.)

Well, if you interpret the Rate of Fire like that (which – by the way – i would do as well usually), the actual RoF would be a numerical value having the unit [1/s]. Reducing the “Rate of Fire” by one second would mean that you’re subtracting one second from said value, and the result would have the nonsensical Unit [(1/s)-s]. The very concept of “reducing a rate by a second” seems rather strange

Now i see mainly two possibilities:
a) they said “rate of fire” (i would prefer attack-frequency in this case, but thats another matter), but meant the “period” (timeframe between two attacks) instead. In this case you’re right: the period would be decreased by 1 second, thus increasing the attack-frequency/rate of fire, which would be a solid buff to it.

b) they increased the period by 1 second (nerfing the skill), and the writer mixed things up: He could have been thinking about the ‘real’ Rate of Fire when he/she wrote ‘The Rate of Fire has been reduced", and then about the period when he/she wrote ’by 1 second.’. This isn’t as far fetched as it may sound – increases/decreases in RoF are easy to imagine, but the numerical value of a rate might be not as intuitive as timeframe between two attacks: Telling us how the RoF went from 0,166[1/s] to 0,142[1/s] isn’t very intuitive, but everyone has some sort of idea of how long ‘one second more’ is. My guess is this is what happened here, but then again, it’s only a feeling

I got mixed feelings about this.

• Deception: This change is utterly AWESOME! I can’t count how many times i got finished without any possibility of resistance, just because a thief was equipping an offhand dagger… but now it’s payback time!

• Phantasmal Mage Change: Somehow i’am not surprised… a-net buffed something condition-related again. I usually try to avoid using the torch, since it’s phantasm absolutely sucks powerwise (why taking it if i could have an iSwordsman or iDuelist?), and because it’s trait would prevent me from choosing ‘Greatsword Training’ or ‘Shattered Concentration’, but depending on my opponents capability to dish out conditions, i may have to take a traited torch with me. Any increase in the timeframe between iMages attacks decreases the chance of it getting rid of two (or maybe even more) conditions on me, and when playing shatter i might not be able to ‘wait another second’ before shattering it.

• Confusing Images: well, yet another condibuff to scepter (who would have thought :P ?). I don’t really mind it – my damage won’t profit much from it, and i’am not sure how much of a difference this will make for even dedicated condition builds.

• Time Warp: I always found the Cooldown to be a bit on the high side. 180s seem far more apropiate than 240s. I wonder where it will be used though. Dungeons? PvP? In Open World PvE isn’t all that useful due to it’s relatively high Cooldown. Roamers and Havoc groups prefer Mass Invisibility over Time Warp (for obvious reasons), which kinda limits the usage of Time Warp to accellerating your teammates attacks on tower-doors (i sooo wish it would work on inmobile siege like rams or catapults). All in All i like this one, it’s just not relevant to me.

• Illusion of Life: This skill was useless, is useless, will be useless, and is doomed to stay useless for all eternity. Except if there is some Moa near to use it as rallytool during the 15 seconds… No, scratch that, this skill still sucks.

• Phantasmal Defender: i like the reduction of Cooldown for this one. Unfortunately, it’s astronomically long casting time of 1½ seconds is a far greater threat to my health than it’s cooldown. 1½ seconds, during which you have to eat all kind of damage (lest you interrupt the summoning process) and are easily interruptable. Thats even more Casting Time than the future-version of Killshot. And if i were to decide, i would say that Killshot does offer far more for its casting time than illusionary Defender does (one-Hit K.O from tanky soldier Warrior on Zerky Mesmer after baiting all of the latters dodges by mindlessly spamming all of his skills vs. 50% less damage received with a set Buffer which can even be directly attacked – or the same time as the mesmer, making it even worse)

Overall the changes are kinda ‘meh’ in my Opinion, especially when the other classes (except eles) get such nice ones. And hey, the thief even got

Blinding Power: This skill no longer interrupts your own skills.

now, where is that change for our ‘decoy’ :O !?

Jim Hunter.6821:

Maybe the better argument is that they should remove all the random npc’s that get in the way of combat. I personally hate when I’m fighting 1vX and I watch someone rally off a firefly because I can’t get in for the stomp. Who knows, it might even take some strain off the servers and make WvW a little less laggy.

this so much. Or, if a-net doesn’t want to, at least limit the rally-up mechanic to deaths of enemy players