Guild Wars 2

I guess my main problem with this particular segment of the living story is that the over-tuned mechanics that are typical for dungeon/fractal content ala GW2 design are being FORCED on players who don’t like and don’t participate in GW2’s dungeon/fractal design.

Also, IMO it’s lazy design to make an encounter “challenging” by basically increasing TTK with a metric crap-ton of interrupt mechanics. By that I mean AI that attacks right when you try a long cast skill such as Necro’s #2 dagger or #2 axe or #4 deathshroud, PLUS also using a crap-ton of fast-paced area denial AOE. The end result is that an encounter with SIMPLE mechanics to understand turns into dodge, run, run more, dodge again, cast ohkitten defensive skill, attack, dodge, run, run, run, run, attack, run dodge run dodge, etc. ad nauseum for way too long.

Which is exactly what is wrong with most dungeon/fractal content too, IMO.

I realize that some people really dig “challenge” like this. And it’s perfectly fine to give it to them. But it’s NOT fine to force everyone who just wants to enjoy the story and feel like they’re part of a living world to go through this. It’s just not everyone’s cup of tea.

Mainline content (aka, the living story, which is the only new content being developed ever again by Anet), should be tuned for casual players. Not for hardcore dungeon twitch players. It’s that simple, IMO.

Been here since before launch. All classes but Engineer at level 80 and in full exotics or better. Sorry Anet, but if living story episodes are going to be as overtuned as this one was, I’m out. I know others will disagree, but here’s one person’s negative feedback.

Delois.3974:

shaktiboi.5194:

Jade Quarry, just checked, no reward chest, nothing other than “Mist Runner” in my Spring Tourney listings (yes, I’m 10/10).

We dont get for another 20-30min

EDIT: I just now received the 1st place reward chest. So did my wife. Thanks!

Jade Quarry, just checked, no reward chest, nothing other than “Mist Runner” in my Spring Tourney listings (yes, I’m 10/10).

I’ve done the “Boss Blitz” roughly 4 times now over two different days. Wanted to be sure of my feedback.

1. It’s overtuned. Pure and simple. Takes way too long.

2. Rewards are terrible for the time investment and difficulty (see #1)

3. The overall mechanics are fun and interesting, but it’s overtuned too much (see #1)

4. It is NOT designed to be realistically done in a reasonable amount of time/effort with the typical random PUG that shows up in any one instance. In other words, it’s overtuned.

I have no real desire to do this again. Your dungeon/encounter designers need to reign themselves in.

Thanks for the above replies. It appears that in my attempts to understand the new tournament structure, I misread how long it lasts. I thought it ended on April 25 (four weeks total). Because I couldn’t find anything that listed more than four rounds in the tourney.

In that case, no worries. If I’m at 7/10 at the less than halfway point, I suppose it’s reasonably structured.

Longtime player, 7 classes at 80, pretty much all I care about is WvW play (your dungeon endgame is terribad, and I’m not an SPvP type of player). As a “hardcore casual”, I play nearly every single day, and usually for 60 to 90 minutes. Sometimes life interferes and I miss a day, but that’s rare. Sometimes I play only for 30-45 minutes because that’s all I have a window for. I usually dub dub for as long as two food/oil buffs last. Oh, and I’m on JQ, so there’s lots of nice dub dub to be had.

So here it is, April 21, and I’ve got only 7/10 achievements finished for the WvW Tournament.

I’m not going to make the remaining 3 achievements in the next four days. I can tell by looking at where I’m at in the tiers on the closest ones. Is it really your intent to shut out the “casual hardcore” players like me? All I do is WvW, I play nearly every day for roughly an hour, and I have no hope of making this achievement?

Furthermore, your new WvW Tournament rewards actually discourage playing on the real maps. It’s simply faster and easier to hit many of these targets in the EoTM map. For the last two weeks, I’ve felt compelled to spend my login time in EoTM rather than in the regular maps helping my server out. There is no way in hell I would be even at 7/10 by now if I’d been dutifully logging in to help with the tournament itself.

You really need to rethink the requirements for the tourney tickets. I’m quite dispirited.

I’m terribly disappointed with the high cost of transmutation charges. Anet, what motivation do I have to buy and enjoy multiple sets of armor, various cool weapon skins (like Jory’s daggers, etc.) if I ALSO have to pay nearly $5 to put on one of those sets of armors?

You’ve got it all wrong. Make your money selling us nice cosmetic gear. Don’t then also try to rob our wallet to put on those various sets of gear. That should be FREE.

As it stands, I have less motivation than ever to fork over 10-ish dollars per nifty set of cosmetic gear you release. Why? Why bother?

I am truly disappointed in the ridiculously high cost of transmutation charges. I was excited about the new wardrobe system until I saw this.

Nope. Not going to spend a penny on these. No point. Not going to indulge my usual fashionista regular “change my look several times a week” urges that other MMOs let me do without trying to rob my wallet.

NO

JaironKalach.4938:

Started reading this with my crash-helmet on, expecting another one of “those” posts. Instead, ended up with +1. I’m still enjoying the game, and expect to for a long while, but… all of your points resonate to some extent. I do wish that you hadn’t, even calmly, trashed Robert Hrouda. In the end, it makes it personal and detracts from the thrust of your point, which I believe is:

Your dungeon content has no “middle ground” difficulty level for less skilled players.

Your point was made eloquently and bringing him in didn’t add anything to it.

That’s a fair point, and I did think long and hard about that aspect of the feedback. However, Robert has made it clear on many occasions that he fundamentally believes that dungeons should be very hard. I fundamentally believe that he’s wrong, and so do 500-ish other people that I’ve interacted with about the dungeon content over the past 6 months. I fundamentally believe that if you have only a “very hard” tier of dungeons, you exclude a huge portion of the audience that funds the game development.

If the dungeon design were more casual friendly, some how (perhaps by having multiple tiers of difficulty), then my casual guild would still be logging in at least once a week to play together by crawling a dungeon together. We’ve done that for years in other games. We’d still be logging in regularly, having fun together, and occasionally spending money on vanity items or gems to convert to gold to try some different gearing options, or whatever. For the long haul. But as it is now? There’s no reason to log in weekly and get together in GW2. We’re looking for other games to give us that excuse now. We’d LOVE to have a reason to keep logging in weekly to GW2, as a guild, and doing things together, but there is literally nothing left for us to do that’s interesting or engaging.

Algreg.3629:

sorry, if you reference TSW elite dungeons as a measurement of player skill, it is hard to take your estimation of GW2 difficulty very serious. Normally, dungeons are easily completed here even with PUGs.

You realize you’re reinforcing my point, right?

Point being, a casual guild that, on whole, could handle the middle level of difficulty in end game content in other games (such as TSW), by contrast struggles greatly with the learning curve of even the “easiest” exp paths here.

Let’s be clear: I’m not against making really hard dungeon content for the elite players who want and like that. What I’m saying is that Hrouda’s design philosophy leaves casual players who are not leet dungeon crawlers out in the cold if they want to have fun together as a casual “friends and family” guild. And Fractals are indeed easier overall, but to do 3x in a row and the Jaw Maw at the end is a serious time investment for casual players who might need 2 hours or more to grind through all that content in one go. Casual players by definition are primarily those who have very short time windows in which to play. It gets even harder to find a time window where 5x casual players can all play together at the same time for fun.

Sure those same players can individually get into a PUG or another guild group with strong dungeon players who know the encounters very well and be “carried along” just fine. But that’s not the point of many smaller “casual” guilds.

Right now, the only endgame content accessible to smaller casual guilds who aren’t full of people with leet skills is open world events. That’s about it. That’s not a lot of incentive to keep casual players around, except for the ones that don’t mind essentially running solo and guild hopping as needed to gain access to end-game content.

GW2’s current endgame design is very friendly to solo casual players, because a solo player can easily join any large guild they like for support in endgame activities. Like to SPvP or WvW? No problem: there are plenty of large, organized guilds that focus squarely on that. Like to grind dungeons and push to high levels of FoTM progression? No problem: lots of larger dungeon-centric guilds to join so you can always be taught the ropes and the boss encounters. And even be “carried along” by better, stronger dungeoneers if you’re still learning or even somewhat weak at dungeoneering yourself.

And now the new guild missions have arrived. Unfortunately, only the large guilds with tons of members to generate enough income (in influence) can afford to do the unlocks.

Meanwhile, the smaller, casual “friends and family” style guilds are left totally in the cold at end game. My multi-game guild of many years is effectively dead now here in GW2 because of the current end-game design. Call us bads and jeer all you like, but Hrouda’s idea of dungeon challenge leaves us in the cold. We struggle mightily as a guild to complete even the “easiest” exp paths such as AC2 or COF1, etc. And that was even before the recent AC rework. We struggle at FoTM level 4 and higher, taking nearly 90 minutes to get through even two fractals if we pull the harder ones. And often running out of time for a scheduled guild run and not even being able to complete all 3 fractals.

I’ll point out that this same group of people was able to run all mid-difficulty “elite” dungeons in The Secret World just fine in a reasonable amount of time and with a reasonable learning curve.

So PvP is out unless you are a small group of hardcore PvP elites or you join a large organized guild.

Dungeons are out unless you are a small group of hardcore dungeon elites or you join a large guild.

We were hoping that the much-vaunted “guild missions” would actually give us something to do together at end game, but again, Anet’s very strange ideas about how to provide content for casual players has completely stonewalled us. We’ve been together since launch with as many as 20 people for the first few months and now down to a remaining crew of about 10 people. We’re casual players. At this point we have only 50K influence. That’s after 6 months and buying only some very basic low tiers to get a guild bank, guild armor/weaponsmith, etc. We can’t even buy our way into the first guild mission unlock because that will cost us 66K influence. And even if we manage to eventually unlock that first Guild Bounty mission, we’ll NEVER get past that. We’ll NEVER be able to afford the unlock for any other type of guild mission.

Fail, Anet. Fail. You really need to reconsider your end game content and stop putting up barriers to entry for the casual folks.

I could be wrong, but IIRC the plan for legendary weaps was this:

Soon: add a slot that will take infusions. NOT buff the stats to ascended levels. So: exo stats but room for more more infusion to combat agony in Fractals.

When ascended weapons are finally introduced: buff stats on legendary to match those of ascended weaps. This is to prevent legendaries from becoming obsolete, stat-wise.

Yaki.9563:

You’re all wrong.

How to be helpful. NOT

dani.1956:

I just did it few hours ago , i can say that the burning is bugged ! Even if you move you get burning effect on you after the first boss shield and 2nd and 3rd ! Nobody in particular causes that burning so must be a glitch ! Maybe a dev could look into it !

Edit: Got to love when players give advices how to finish something when thats not the point of the thread !

Yes, this. This is exactly what nailed us so bad. We never wiped on this one before (but lots of downs and ups). Today: wiped 4x in a row and barely scratched the champ.

stof.9341:

shaktiboi.5194:

Again, then, how on earth did I achieve the monthly last month? Is this a Feburary change? Didn’t see it in the patch notes.

I. Never. Set. Foot. In. Anything. Other. Than. A. Fractal. Last. Month.

…And got my monthly.

Probably has to do with the fact the last monthly didn’t ask you to do dungeons at all.

Well, technically you had to do 7 fractals.

I asked within my guild and understand now. Last month the quota was specifically for fractal runs. This month they’re for “dungeons”, which apparently Anet distinguishes from “fractals”.

Shadowfist.2708:

shaktiboi.5194:

Aragorn Son of Arathorn.4015:

1) Fractals of the Mists don’t count toward your monthly achievement.

How did I get January’s monthly quota then? I did nothing but fractals. I haven’t set foot in one of the old dungeons since the FoTM came out, because most of the old ones are horrible and bug-ridden.

Confirming that Fractals do NOT count towards monthly. Sorry but it doesn’t.

Shaman is one of the hardest bosses, yes, but he’s still easily doable so long as you dodge appropriately.

Again, then, how on earth did I achieve the monthly last month? Is this a Feburary change? Didn’t see it in the patch notes.

I. Never. Set. Foot. In. Anything. Other. Than. A. Fractal. Last. Month.

…And got my monthly.

And yes, we all know to keep moving. We all know to stay spread out and not catch each other on fire. We all use voice to alert that we’ve got the burning effect and we all know not to run around across each other’s paths.

Seriously, we know how to do it and never had that much trouble before after learning the encounter. This is the first time we’ve hit this fractal after Jan 28, and it was significantly more downs from burning. It’s fine if one person goes down regularly, but when 2x or 3x are downed at the same time, it’s hard to stay ahead of the incoming damage rate.

Even my mesmer was running around at 50% health or less most of the time, and I was the least hard hit by the change.

Aragorn Son of Arathorn.4015:

1) Fractals of the Mists don’t count toward your monthly achievement.

How did I get January’s monthly quota then? I did nothing but fractals. I haven’t set foot in one of the old dungeons since the FoTM came out, because most of the old ones are horrible and bug-ridden.

P.S. It also sucks mightily that a team can beat their head on a Fractal run for 2 hours, and simply because they cannot complete the third and final fractal due to stuff like this, they get zero credit for the dungeon in their monthly achievement tally. This whole backloaded “you don’t get kitten unless you finish the entire thing” design is utter kitteny kitten.

After the Jan 28 rollout of retuned dungeons, I have to honestly say that the Volcanic Fractal burning in the last fight with the Shaman feels wwwaaaaaayyyyyyy overtuned now. My team that used to be able to complete that with a reasonable amount of downs (and revives) and no wipes just got our kittens handed to us in this one.

The burning seems to come far more frequently and even shout warriors with 6x Soldier Runes and and 3x shouts were not able to keep themselves from going down due to constant burning intake. Every member of the team has at least 2x condition removers of some sort.

It’s just way overkill now. We had to call it quits after the 4th full wipe. Very frustrated with this one now.

By contrast, other fractals are tuned a bit easier now (which is good, not bad).

Overall, the dungeon designers here still have a LOT of balance work to do, IMO. Although many of us have adapted now, not one person in my casual guild still thinks of these dungeons as “good and fun”. Well, except for Cliffside. Out of all the standard and Fractal dungeons, Cliffside is the only one we all universally think is fun. But it is too kitten long. We’ve never finished Cliffside in anything less than 40 minutes and that’s way too long for a fractal, IMO.

I don’t know the Subject Alpha encounter, so perhaps there the group is constrained to a very small area when fighting?

But what I do know is this: the entire trick to rezzing downed or even defeated teammates is this:

1. If you know or even suspect the boss has aggro on you, then move away from the downed/defeated person to body pull the boss away from that person too.

2. Meanwhile, if you know that the boss isn’t aggroed on you at the moment, run to the downed player and start rezzing.

3. When the boss notices you and obviously starts heading towards you because you’re rezzing, then dodge away from the downed player and now it’s your turn to body pull the boss away from the downed player.

Look: it’s incredibly simple to explain this mechanic to noobs. You don’t have to rez a player in one go. You can chip away at it 10- or 20- or 30 percent at a time. Boss finally notices you’re rezzing someone? STOP REZZING and move the kitten away from the downed person.

My team does this in Fractals all the time and we routinely get even fully defeated players back into the fight with NO problem and NO multiple downs.

Here’s how it goes:

“downed”
“I’ll get him” (other 3 keep pew-pewing on boss)
“he’s on me now” (dodges away)
“I’ll get him” (other three keep pew-pewing)
“he’s on me now” (dodges away)
“I’ll get him”….. and so on.
“I’m up” (all 5 on boss now)

They listened. The changes like this are listed in the patch notes. It’s now reasonable to get around in Melchors and Cursed.

Absolutely. Yes. Eventually, nearly every stat combination on exotic armor and weapons and jewelry is available through some means other than through dungeon tokens.

Malice.8439:

I’d say that getting anything done without Deceptive Evasion past 40 would be… Impressive.

If you can get to 40 without Deceptive Evasion (generate a clone when you dodge), you can certainly do fine after 40 without it. That said, if you’re plannign to go 20 points in the Dueling line, that’s an easy no-brainer pick for the Master trait.

But really, any two weapon combos can put out 4x clones/phants continually (and this is easy to do while kiting at max range if your two weapons are Greatsword and Staff), and you also have Mirror Images and Decoy for 3x more illusions you can pop out when needed.

I’m pretty sure I didn’t bother with Deceptive Evasion until after I hit level 80 and started experimenting with WvW and dungeon builds.

Besides, you’d be surprised how many people either don’t like dodging or aren’t comfortable trying to do it well and often.

Wise.8025:

Lianna.6980:

MasterPakku.2890:

1) are mesmers that hard to lvl?
2) r they perfect in pvp?

1) Yes. Hardest levelling possible.
2) Depends on your skills. If you are good player, you’ll enjoy mesmer very much, if not, you will not find mesmer good enough class compared to, let’s say, Elementalist.

^^^^
This is the only post I read where they were completely honest with themselves in answering.

1) Mesmer is by far the slowest and most difficult class to level, that being said it’s really not too bad. Just expect all other classes to be easier.
2) PvP is entirely skill based. If you’re bad you’ll die until you learn to be better. If you’re aware that you’re bad and you kill other players as a mesmer it’s because they are worse. Mesmer noobs do very well vs other noobs in pvp because the clones confuse people. Advanced Mesmer pvp is a lot harder, you will be carrying team fight utilities and should expect to get focused right after the necro on your team.

I beg to differ. Strongly. Mesmer was the 5th class I pushed up to 80 and it was probably 2nd easiest across the board, with only Warrior being easier.

Did you level with some weapon combo other than Greatsword plus Staff? If so, that might explain your perception. With GS + Staff, you can constantly and continually pop out clones and phantasms, and have access to all kinds of utility and straight up damage (especially from GS1). No mob will ever get close to you, not even in a swarm. Things melt. Especially when you get near level 40 and start learning how useful 15 seconds of retaliation from your F2 shatter (with the proper 10-point trait) is.

Mesmer is dirt easy to level, especially if you simply swap weapons constantly to take advantage of TEN attacks and not only FIVE attacks.

Heck, for that matter, one of my guildies was a Mesmer on her first char and she never used anything but Staff in battle. She used Sword/Focus only for faster running from place to place. Even with just a staff alone, she was untouchable. She was always the one taking the least damage and often the “last person standing” when things went bad with a really big overpull or unexpected adds.

Nabrok.9023:

It absolutely was not ever stated by anybody that there would be no grind. It has always been intended that there would be grind for cosmetics.

Legendary weapons are cosmetic, they have no better stats than exotics.

Ascended gear is a step up, but it’s minimal and there’s only 4 slots that you can possibly put it in right now, and one of those you’ll get by just doing your daily for about a month.

Failed logic. I agree with the OP, and yes, I feel lied to.

Here’s the flaw in your logic: any one piece of ascended gear might be only + 10 stat points. Five pieces of ascended jewelry = + 50 stat points. Now tack on ascended weapons and ascended armor. That’s potentially another ? + 100 ? stat points?

So: in sPvP or WvW, two players are facing off. One has 150 more stat points than the other. You think that doesn’t matter?

This is what we’re kittened about. Anet broke the covenant with us. There is now very much a “grind for stats”

I didn’t have a problem with yesterday’s daily list (gather X, kill variety X, events X, dodge X, and revive X), but that’s in large part because:

A. I play WvW and like it
B. I find dodging attacks easy and its an integrated technique for me.

But I can already see how the dodge X, revive X can be unfriendly to solo players or players who don’t like PvP. And the two failed attempts you yanked for the emergency patch (craft X and kill with combo X) are likewise very unfriendly to solo players or players who don’t enjoy crafting.

This is a BAD trend, Anet. And a BAD idea. You need to seriously rethink your approach to dailies.

What’s worse is that none of the 4 new types I listed do ANTHING at all to “get players back out into the world”, per your supposed design goals for the daily revamp that you’ve trumpeted in the past week.

I strongly recommend you revert to the standard daily list we’ve had for a while now, while your team takes a close second list at the new ones you dreamed up and thought we’d all love. You should ensure that each one is: solo-capable, does not require PvP to get done in a reasonable amount of time, and does not require crafting.

For example, that “revive X” one that I did last night. Well, that took about 20 minutes in WvW, but it would have been impossible out in the non PvP world. Honestly, how many non PvPers will stumble across dead players in the world? It’s not very common.

Why not make the new list more like:

Kill 5 different swamp creatures
Kill 5 different mountain creatures
Kill 5 different cave creatures
Harvest 15 nodes in caves
Protect an underwater village (1 underwater defense event)

… and so on. These would be solo-able AND would actually make people get out and explore the world?

Speaking plainly but with genuine consideration…

You sound like you’re still very low level and unfamiliar with the class.

For nearly all classes (and mesmer is no exception), you can level all the way to 80 with no difficulty at all by using any mish-mash of armor colors and stats, any weapons, and any traits.

Most mesmers will agree that for leveling to 80, you simply cannot go wrong with GS + Staff as your two weapons. And that the only “mandatory” traits in that setup are the ones that give you 20% faster cooldowns on your staff attacks, and the one that gives you 20% faster cooldowns on your greatsword attacks. Everything else is flavor and experimentation.

You only need to obsess over specific builds and specific gear stats after you hit level 80 and want to maximize your potential for farming, dungeons, sPvP, WvW, etc. You can level just fine with dropped gear, even below your current level, all the way to 80. You’ll save a lot of money this way too. Don’t obess over having greens or yellows on the way up to 80.

Now that said, you want a pistol offhand. I advise you go to with sword main hand then, and use Staff as your weapon swap. By the time you hit level 40 and have some decent Power in your mish mash of gear, learn to make the Retaliation effect work in your favor, because it’s so easy to apply with your F2 shatter for 15 seconds with a simple 10 point trait in the bottom row “Cry of Frustration grants retaliation”. Retaliation is your friend. Read up on it in the wiki. It’s not that powerful at lower levels, but by 40 plus it is very strong in PvE fights.

Since you have Pistol offhand, look around in the various traits for something that gives pistol a faster cooldown, and of course since you have sword in your main hand look for the trait that gives that a faster cooldown.

Other than looking for faster cooldowns on your three weapons and getting yourself that special retaliation on F2 shatter trait by around level 40, just experiment and find what you like. You’ll be a much better mesmer by experimenting than by blindly following one cookie cutter build. Read about all the popular builds and puzzle out why they work and try them for yourself and figure out what works for you and what doesn’t. But that’s a task that will make more sense after you’ve got about 60 levels under your belt. It won’t take long.

I’ve seen some outcry that the newly-balanced dungeon encounters are now “too easy”.

I want to applaud Robert and Anet for making them easier, however. I’d like to remind everyone else, especially the “too easy” folks, that The Secret World has effectively perished because it held on to the notion of catering the vertical progression only for the hardcore “leets” who felt strongly that:

1. The best gear should drop only in the hardest dungeons and therefore be earned only by “deserving” players with enough skill and dedication.
2. Casuals should not have an alternative route to the best possible gear stats. Either buck it up and figure out how to effectively complete Nightmare mode dungeons or get lost.

Well, take a look at where that player desire and design philosophy got Funcom and The Secret World in short order.

My guild (a casual guild), was going strong in TSW from day one until we all collectively hit this “brick wall” for casual players. I maintained one of the most widely-read fansites with detailed mechanics, FAQs, builds, etc. (http://yokaiblog.wikidot.com) (I’m “Yokai”). But we soon learned, like most other casual players, that attaining the equivalent of exotic gear here in GW2 was effectively out of our reach as casual players.

Right about that time GW2 came out. We all saw the potential, and within 3 weeks my entire guild minus one person was over here playing GW2. I warned the 2nd lead designer for TSW (Joel C. Bylos) that my guild was just one example of how Anet understood the need to provide access to maximum vertical progression to casual players, and that if Funcom didn’t change its stance on the issue, they would suffer. He agreed in principle, but nothing substantial changed after that. Casuals still face that same brick wall today, and, well, just look at how bad a shape TSW is in. By contrast, me and my spouse have thrown $100 per month since launch at Anet for this fantastically entertaining game with no serious boundaries thrown in the way of casual players. Except for one. Which is the subject of this post.

Anet did the right thing here by making the standard dungeons a bit easier than before! Why? Because frankly, they were a mess and too hard for typical casual players. I have a guild full of them. I know the yardstick. I hear the reactions and voice chatter. It takes more work than you’d think even for an organized casual guild with voice comms and actually pretty decent players to grind for even AC tokens. I’ve only got like 45 of them at this point, and while that is MOSTLY due to the horrible bugs that stop a team from even completing something like AC path 2 (Detha) 60% of the time (before yesterday), it’s ALSO due to the perceived difficulty of things like the old Detha-traps encounter. Or the 2x graveling scavengers who would routinely wipe my guild team.

“L2P Noob!”, you say? “Detha Traps was dirt easy before!” “Scavengers are easy to beat!”

Ya, I hear you. But you’re wrong. What you’re really saying is “…were dirt easy for ME”. And you’re forgetting that perhaps you’re just a good, or really good, player.

Here’s the problem: There are certain types of gear and gear stats that you can get ONLY from dungeons. For example, you cannot acquire L80 exotic weapons with P/V/T stats any other way than by grinding for AC tokens (and one other dungeon too, IIRC). That’s just one example. The old dungeon difficulty was effectively locking too many casual players out of ever hoping to acquire such weapons.

For example. I’ve been playing since launch. I have five L80 classes now, and a 6th in the works. I have 753 hours played. But I still don’t have one L80 exotic P/V/T staff for my guardian, or a set of such weapons for my mesmer to try a vitality tank build for WvW, and so on. Because with my mostly static group of friends and guildmates who are casual players with limited time windows to play, we just haven’t been able to grind out the dungeon tokens because the runs are too long, too irritating, and too buggy. And we can’t afford to keep slamming at it over and over several times a day like so many of you can.

So I, for one, am looking forward to trying out the new dungeons. And if they’re easier, then finally me and 15-ish other people I know will ONLY NOW have an effective chance to get the gear from those dungeons that we’ve been wanting since launch.

If you want harder dungeons, go do Fractals at Difficulty 50. Why argue to make the old dungeons harder again, thereby kittening the casual players who have been locked away from certain vertical progression options until now?

People here arguing for “dungeons should only be hardmode” should go take a careful look at the short history and disaster that is The Secret World. They had a philosophy of “dungeons should be really hard, and the best rewards should come only from mastering the hardest tier of dungeons (Nightmare mode).”

Here’s what happened. TSW went from subscription-based to FTP inside a record 4 months. Funcom’s stock tanked. The game is on lifesupport. The original lead designer is gone. Monthly content rollout is laughably small.

Why? Because the best possible tier of gear (Purple) was available only from token drops in NM dungeons. You had to unlock two previous tiers of dungeons to get to this point, and pass a somewhat tough “gatekeeper” challenge solo. You needed a seriously good group of 5 people to get through all 6 bosses of an NM dungeon. You needed, essentially, a static group, not a PUG. Of generally ‘leet’ players.

So guess what all this meant? Effectively, most casual players hit an effective brick wall in vertical progression VERY fast. Most casual PUGS and casual guilds could get through the 2nd hardest tier (Elite mode), but couldn’t get going on Nightmare mode. Effectively, most casual players were locked into only blue gear at max, which equates in GW2 to being forced to wear only yellow rares and never, ever be able to get your hands on orange exotics or higher.

What you guys are asking for would create the same situation here. It’s the CASUAL players who pay the bills, my friends. Not the very few hardcore leets who cry that there isn’t a hard mode strong enough for their tastes. Well, TSW was full of such leets with the same cry, and look where it got them (and Funcom).

Anet knows better, and that’s why GW2 is the new 800-lb gorilla on the MMO block.

Edit: and before you argue “but you can get exotics here without doing any dungeons at all!” Nope. Wrong. I cannot get my hands on L80 exotic P/V/T weapons any other way than by farming tokens in AC and one other dungeon. There are a lot of stat combos on certain types of gear that are available ONLY through dungeon vendors and nothing else.

Plumsucker.9507:

Thank you for this. I was reading all your comments in PyroAthiest’s Immortal build and was trying to find a good balance but you are way ahead of me! This is exactly what I wanted to play since I really love the retaliation trick with the focus 4/sword 3 but wanted to more damage output than Pyro’s build.

It works a treat. Was using it in front line fights last night for an hour and did not get defeated even once. Only got downed 4 times, and thats from standing in range of enemy walls reviving fallen allies for that stupid new daily achievement, lol, and getting away with too much bleedmor burning damage still on me after blowing both of my condi strippers from staying in thenAOE to get them up. Scored about 40+ kills.

I’d blink out of range back towards my zerg to ensure I got downed where I could be safely revived.

FxyO.8243:

so im basically screwed and have to buy a whole power set plus runes?

Any old mix of armor works fine. If you have the extra scratch or craft armor, then prioritize Knight armor stats (pow/tough/precision). But really, Armor doesn’t matter u til you hit 65+.

Get a greatsword and staff ASAP. use GS primarily to open with, and when most of your cooldowns are used up, switch to staff and use those cooldowns. Back and forth. Easy peasy.

Damage is fine if you do this. Let your illusions do the heavy lifting. Let your GS auto attack do the rest of the work. Youll see.

Malice.8439:

A lot of people seem to recommend greatsword/staff. Personally, I don’t see the synergy. One wants power, the other wants condition damage. The one thing they have in common would be precision, with staff wielders going for power only for shatters.

I’d much rather propose going Greatsword and Sword/Sword or Greatsword and Sword/Pistol

The synergy is in he flow between the weapons themselves. Don’t worry about condition damage versus power/crit. Any old armor stats will do.

BTW staff hit hard even with zero +Condition Damage. Dont believe me? Look at all the Knights or Soldier armor used in shatter tank builds, most of which use staff on the weapon swap.

Easy. One of the easiest. (I have 5 classes at level 80 now)

All you need is greatsword and staff. Traits and build don’t matter while leveling. Don’t even bother with shatters, just let all your illusions die naturally.

When you hit 80, that’s when you start worrying about build and how to shatter correctly.

No. Just as bad as before. Spent 90 minutes combing cursed shore tonight for ori and ancient wood nodes. No improvement. New chests for loot that’s blue or higher? Saw two. That’s it.

Moldy bags are dropping more, true enough. And mob density isn’t as bad as before but it’s still hard to move through an area compared to Frostgorge or other zones.

Anet, I officially despise your broken DR. Please remove it. Im truly losing patience and despair of you ever restoring the fun to what it was before Nov 15 when you broke loot completely.

Medazolam.3058:

from first pass over the patch notes, it appears there may be some changes to the loot in the game.

Disagree. To me it seems they very carefully said nothing at all that would imply a fix to the DR problem and crappy loot in general. They only upped the drop rate of a specific Mouldy Bag drop (higher level crafting items).

More than a bit.

@ EasymodeX: Excellent point on the 10 points in Chaos. Fixed. I’ve been loving the fast Blink and had blinders on for that one, but I don’t even need to playtest to tell that Warden’s Feedback is a better tradeoff for a 24-second blink in this particular build. I also fixed the old sigils and jewels that were hanging around from 7Mesmer’s original (lol) that I used as the base for this particular build link.

Edit: although now, lol the build looks really similar to PyroAthiest’s ‘Immortal’ build, but with GS and more emphasis on front-loaded damage rather than Vitality tanking through retaliation buildup. ^.^

@ Moddo: Also an excellent point and clarification. I’ll adjust that in my OPs above. Either way, its pretty significant extra damage. (321 “reflected” damage per hit on you at ~1644 power, which is what you’ll have if you gear as described above. You really notice this extra damage output in PvE and Dungeons too.

(Part 3 of 3)

Play style tips:

Run around from fight to fight with Sword/Focus out, and alternate between your speed line (Temporal Curtain, Focus4) and your Heal (Runes of Centaur activation) to have 100% swiftness at all times.

If you get jumped while running around, your first instinct should be to wait until the first attacker is about to hit you, and counter with Sword2 to foil their opening burst. If you have time to plan your response, toss out the Focus 5 phantasm as they’re running in, and maybe even dodge once to spawn a clone and wait to unload your Sword2 if they take the bait and don’t retarget you immediately. After this, try to get retaliation going through either method, with the Focus/Sword combo (curtain, stand on it, then Sword 3 and Sword 3 again after you see the clone pop) having a higher preference, because that way you’ll probably have 2-3 clones up when that first retaliation is about to drop and you can refresh it with an F2 shatter on 2/3 clones instead.

When you find a zerg fight, switch to Greatsword and mostly use Greatsword at the front lines. Save your Sword/Focus for when somebody decides to single you out and kill you. When you see someone coming in at you from the front or from the flank, use the same general tricks as described above for getting jumped while roaming.

A key point here is to switch to Sword/Focus early if you see someone gunning for you. Don’t wait to the last minute, because GS gets weaker they closer they are. If you are ready with Sword/Focus as soon as they get too close for comfort and obviously headed toward you, you can foil them and slow them down with Focus 5 and a dodge roll right as they make their opening move on you. If you get panicked, you can even F2 shatter with only those two illusions out and you’ll still get about 9 seconds of retaliation to help you out.

Try not to use Mirror Images during a front line fight. It will be tempting to do so, but it’s best for when a thief back stabs you because Mirror Images is a stun breaker. So Mirror, then dodge to break target lock and pop3rd clone. Now F2 shatter if it’s ready, and then lay into the theif with Sword 2 for 2 seconds of invulnerability. You have foiled the stun they rely on to keep you locked down while they burst you, you’ve made it so if they keep trying to burst you they’re taking 321 Retaliation damage “reflected” back at them per hit (based on your ~1644 Power), and you still have Focus5, Sword3, and probably another dodge to generate three more clones to mess up their targeting. Now you’re just into straight shatter jousting. I’m here. No! I’m there! And if they stacked more bleeds than you like before you broke their opening burst, just drop a Null Field on top of where you’re fighting to strip those off (and any others they try to add if they think they can still get you.

Note: you can also us Blink as a stun breaker (just blink straight through your attacker), but I prefer to save Blink for gaining additional distance when running from a situation I can’t survive. YMMV.

When things get dicey and you can’t prevail while jousting in shatter range, switch to GS, push them back with GS5, then blink away to gain distance, and don’t blow your Healing right away. Instead, turn around and cripple them with GS4 if it’s ready, then run for a short while until you can flip to sword/focus again, then use your speedline first if possible to gain swiftness. Try to save your Heal for stripping cripple off yourself if they manage to do so while you’re running.

Okay, I hope this helps new mesmers and experience mesmers alike! I love how many ways there are to play a mesmer well in WvW.

(Part 2 of 3)

Another thing to understand: This playstyle isn’t usually targeted at Zerg vs Zerg frontline fighting (although it can save your bacon if an enemy is determined to bust through the front line specifically to try to burst you down). This playstyle is generally used more for small group patrols and for sPVP. However, with one tweak, I think it is awesome for general Zerg vs Zerg because there are always people who try to push through (or flank) and try to burst down what they think are the squishy cloth targets. In these cases, the Sword main hand can save your bacon because of the Sword2 being a 2-second complete immunity during the opponent’s opening burst! When you see someone coming right at you, just swap to sword and hit #2 right as they try to burst you. Foiled! Now you have lots of tricks to make them pay for their insolence, and you still can run away if you need to.

So I tend to run with a Retaliation shatter build full time now even in zerg battles, but I switch out my staff for a greatsword instead and take my chances when crafty else’s or thieves try to get me. Usually the sword tricks are enough to discourage or kill them, and If I need a getaway I use GS5 to push them back, then blink away to gain the distance I need. And that works fine. And GS is much better for zerging than staff, because you score way more kills at typical front-line range. It just hits a lot harder and is tuned to hit hardest at maximum 1200 range.

The specific build is:

Greatsword + Sword/Focus (all Knights)
Sigil of Force on the Greatsword, Sigil of Generosity on the Sword, Sigil of Force on the Focus.

4x Knight’s Armor + 2x Soldier’s Armor (but 6x Knight’s is fine too)
6x Superior Centaur runes on the armor, for 14-ish seconds of swiftness when I use my heal.

Mostly Emerald jewelry (essentially Knight’s stats), but 2x pieces of Beryl too for a little extra crit damage.

With all exotic gear, I hit those target stats I summarized above.

Here’s a link to the specific traits and skills:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fgUQNAsdRlwzipHVzpGa9IyJFQ3yh6x2ldfXJF82FC

Some notes about the traits and skills that vary from the general “shatter” archetype:

Most shatter builds are -very- weak in condition removal. As in “none at all”. I don’t like that, because the #1 thing that gets you killed in WvW is being crippled when you are on the run from a bad situation. So this build features 2 different methods of condition removal:

A trait that lets you remove one condition on heal (every 20 seconds)

Null Field. Its best if you stand in Null field and let it tick for a while to strip everything, but on the run you can cast it slightly in front of you and run through it and it will strip 1 or 2 conditions while you run through it. Hopefully, the condition “on top” is cripple, so between this and the above-mentioned trait, you have two chances to strip cripples and get away. Null field is also great in a zerg choke point or on top of a wall in that it can strip everyone around you clean of too many conditions.

I swapped in Null field for the typical Decoy, because in lots of play testing, Decoy will NOT save your bacon. The stealth is too short. You get more survivability from dodge rolling to generate clones and all your other techniques to spam lots of illusions.

Time Warp in the elite slot instead of Mass Invisibility. Because in Zerg vs Zerg fights, especially at choke points, Time Warp doubles the damage output of everyone (on your side) bunched up at the choke point, which can really turn the tide and cause a lot of attrition on the other side, helping your side punch through and rout the opposing zerg. (Nyite is the one who made me a believer of this.)

Since this build features Greatsword on the swap instead of Staff, there’s no need for the typical 20 points in Chaos to get the 20% faster cooldowns on staff skills. These 20 points are better spent getting 2k more HP, the ability to strip a condition every 20 seconds by using your heal, faster CDs on your focus attacks, and making Temp Curtain reflect projectiles. Another strong bonus is giving full-time retaliation to all your clones!

And finally, yes staff is a little safer because of the in-built ‘blink’ from Staff #2, but GS is just much stronger damage. You will score noticeably more badges of honor with GS than with Staff. When you get in trouble up in melee mode with sword/focus, switch to staff and use GS 5 to push them back, then start running and Blink to gain even more distance. If your GS4 is ready by this point, turn around and fire your berserker at them to cripple one or more of them too for good measure, before booking it for safety. Works a treat. I don’t miss staff at all for survivability.

You’ll notice that the “bouncing attacks have one extra bounce” is still a trait in the Illusions line. Remember that GS2 is a bouncing attack, so that’s a 33% increase in damage output for that one attack.

(Part 1 of 3)
Note: the build link is in the middle of Part 2 below.

The following idea are only 10% my own invention. They’re just a summary of what I’ve learned. Much credit to Shattercat, Seven Mesmer (Grimms), and PyroAthiest for their shatter build threads and ideas and feedback. Also to Nyite from my own guild for her observations and experimentation.

A lot of the hot builds you see on the forums are for specialists who like to do sPvP or small patrol roaming in WvW. And who like tough one-vs-many fights. This is especially true of “shatter” builds. But I’ve found a shatter build that I’ve adapted for WvW zerg vs zerg frontline fighting, and which is also great for PvE and dungeons.

A “shatter” build typically features 30 points In Illusions specifically to get the Illusionary Persona trait (XI). This build type also features main hand sword. These two aspects mean that you plan to spend some time up close and personal so that both you and your clones will be in shatter range when you want to shatter.

If you are fighting from range only, with ranged weapons, then half of your illusions pop too far from the target and have to run in towards the target to shatter. Especially in big fights and WvW, some of those illusions might not survive long enough to get into shatter range.

Many shatter builds feature staff on the weapon swap to serve as a getaway stick to gain range when things are getting too hot in melee range. Jink in, use all your shattering tricks up close and personal, then swap to staff and get distance and pew pew and force enemies to work to retarget you, then when you’re ready for another round of up close shattering, go back in to melee range again.

That’s the basic pattern and rhythm of shatter play.

To make this work well, you want LOTS of on-demand illusion generation so that you can shatter and immediately get out more illusions. This means the trait that generates a clone when you dodge is mandatory. And it means that you typically want Miror Images in one of your utility slots because that’s an instant 2x clones you can generate that way too.

Shatter builds also benefit from some amount of stealth too. In some cases, just the Decoy skill is enough. In other cases, you might use Mass Invisibilty for your elite skill and also Torch offhand for a third stealth from The Prestige (torch4). This stealth helps you stay juking aroun in melee range longer before the heat gets too hot and you have to gain distance and recover.

Speaking of gaining distance when you need it, Blink is another nearly must-have skill for shatter play, because with Staff 2 plus Blink you can get waaaaayyyyy away from the opponents.

Now, for the shatters themselves, you have three utility shatters (F2-F4) and one damage shatter (F1). IMO the two most valuable shatters are F1 and F2. If you take the II trait in Illusions (Cry of Frustration grants Retaliation), that makes a 3-illusion F2 shatter give you 15-19 seconds of Retaliation (depending how many points you have in the Chaos trait line), which is huge. If you take this trait, then F2 is usually your first shatter unless you are rocking an offhand focus. After that, you typically leave your illusions in play and save your F1 shatter for a burst finisher when the target is at 1/3 health. Of course, in longer fights or against human players who heal up, you’ll have to play it by ear and go through more shatter cycles in each fight, but the general goal is to save a big F1 shatter for a surprise killing burst. And if you’re relying on Retaliation from the F2 shatter, to reapply retaliation as desired if the fight is going to drag out.

Speaking of Retaliation, if you use an offhand focus, you can get ANOTHER 10-13 seconds of retaliation by standing on your temporal curtain (Focus4), then using Sword3 to toss the sword clone at the target, then using Sword3 again to swap places with the clone. You can have effectively 90-100% uptime on Retaliation this way if you trait for the F2 shatter retaliation too. This is huge both in PvE and in WvW, but it takes a little practice and steady nerves to do the focus-based combo while juking around in melee shatter range.

One other aspect of shatter builds. They are often somewhat tanky by using Knights armor (Pow/Tough/Prec). The goal is to get near 40% crit chance or better so your F1 shatter will hit hard, but still have enough toughness to stay in melee range and survive some hits. Shoot for 40% crit chance, at least 20% crit damage, around 27K Toughness, 1600 Power, and around 17K health or more if you can squeeze it in. Some people tend to run 4x pieces of Knights armor and 2x pieces of Soldiers armor to hit these numbers. (For WvW, that means 2x pieces from the karma vendors in the Orr cathedrals, or the one at the gates of Arah has a head and boots that fit the bill.)

A “shatter” build typically features 30 points In Illusions specifically to get the Illusionary Persona trait (XI). This build type also features main hand sword. These two aspects mean that you plan to spend some time up close and personal so that both you and your clones will be in shatter range when you want to shatter.

If you are fighting from range only, with ranged weapons, then half of your illusions pop too far from the target and have to run in towards the target to shatter. Especially in big fights and WvW, some of those illusions might not survive long enough to get into shatter range.

Many shatter builds feature staff on the weapon swap to serve as a getaway stick to gain range when things are getting too hot in melee range. Jink in, use all your shattering tricks up close and personal, then swap to staff and get distance and pew pew and force enemies to work to retarget you, then when you’re ready for another round of up close shattering, go back in to melee range again.

That’s the basic pattern and rhythm of shatter play.

To make this work well, you want LOTS of on-demand illusion generation so that you can shatter and immediately get out more illusions. This means the trait that generates a clone when you dodge is mandatory. And it means that you typically want Miror Images in one of your utility slots because that’s an instant 2x clones you can generate that way too.

Shatter builds also benefit from some amount of stealth too. In some cases, just the Decoy skill is enough. In other cases, you might use Mass Invisibilty for your elite skill and also Torch offhand for a third stealth from The Prestige (torch4). This stealth helps you stay juking aroun in melee range longer before the heat gets too hot and you have to gain distance and recover.

Speaking of gaining distance when you need it, Blink is another nearly must-have skill for shatter play, because with Staff 2 plus Blink you can get waaaaayyyyy away from the opponents.

Now, for the shatters themselves, you have three utility shatters (F2-F4) and one damage shatter (F1). IMO the two most valuable shatters are F1 and F2. If you take the II trait in Illusions (Cry of Frustration grants Retaliation), that makes a 3-illusion F2 shatter give you 14 solid seconds of Retaliation, which is huge. If you take this trait, then F2 is usually your first shatter unless you are rocking an offhand focus. After that, you typically leave your illusions in play and save your F1 shatter for a burst finisher when the target is at 1/3 health. Of course, in longer fights or against human players who heal up, you’ll have to play it by ear and go through more shatter cycles in each fight, but the general goal is to save a big F1 shatter for a surprise killing burst. And if you’re relying on Retaliation from the F2 shatter, to reapply retaliation as desired if the fight is going to drag out.

Speaking of Retaliation, if you use an offhand focus, you can get ANOTHER 14 seconds of retaliation by standing on your temporal curtain (Focus4), then using Sword3 to toss the sword clone at the target, then using Sword3 again to swap places with the clone. You can have effectively 100% uptime on Retaliation this way I’d you trait for the F2 shatter retaliation too. This is huge both in PvE and in WvW, but it takes a little practice and steady nerves to do the focus-based combo while juking around in melee shatter range.

Hope this helps!

Edit:

One other aspect of shatter builds. They are often somewhat tanky by using Knights armor (Pow/Tough/Prec). The goal is to get near 40% crit chance or better so your F1 shatter will hit hard, but still have enough toughness to stay in melee range and survive some hits. Shoot for 40% crit chance, at least 20% crit damage, around 27K Toughness, and around 17K health or more if you can squeeze it in. Some people tend to run 4x pieces of Knights armor and 2x pieces of Soldiers armor to hit these numbers. (For WvW, that means 2x pieces from the karma vendors in the Orr cathedrals, or the one at the gates of Arah has a head and boots that fit the bill.)

Another thing to understand: This playstyle isn’t targeted at Zerg vs Zerg frontline fighting (although it can save your bacon if an enemy is determined to bust through the front line specifically to try to burst you down). This playstyle is more for small group patrols and for sPVP. I tend to run with a Retaliation shatter build full time now even in zerg battles, but I switch out my staff for a greatsword instead and take my chances when crafty else’s or thieves try to get me. Usually the sword tricks are enough to discourage or kill them, and If I need a getaway I use GS5 to push them back, then blink away to gain the distance I need. And that works fine. And GS is much better for zerging than staff.

Grimms/Seven:

I’ve been playing with your build for about 5 days now, and wanted to point out one variation of your core build that I’m really liking a lot. Basically, its your gearing and your traits, but with the following differences:

1. Focus instead of Torch.
2. The Adept slot in Illusions is the II trait (Cry of Frustration grants Retaliation) instead of the I trait (+10% crit chance on Mind Wrack)
3. Elite skill is Time Warp instead of Mass Invisiblity.

What you give up versus what you gain instead:

Give up:

A. Two stealths. But they’re short stealths, honestly, that won’t save your bacon but will only let you stay irksome for a few moments longer before you need to staff2 away or Blink away and get distance to staff from range for a bit. Yes, I know this is fundamental to your playstyle and build intent but for many of us, we spend 80% of our time in zerg vs zerg frontline attrition fights, not out roaming and harrassing small groups. Those two extra stealths aren’t that useful in ZvZ attrition contests.

B. 40% crit on Mind Wrack instead of 50% crit. That’s a very small difference IMO. Not much of a loss.

That’s it. That’s all you give up.

Gain:

A. Effectively full-time Retaliation with the right combos. Yes, nearly 100% uptime. See PyroAthiest’s [Guide] The Immortal Mesmer build for details. This works fine even with your traiting and my adjustment to the Adept slot in Illusions.

B. Full-time swiftness. Between your 6x Centaur runes and swiftness from Temporal curtain, you will never run at normal speed. Ever.

C. Torch5 pops the phantasm too far from the target, IMO, making it less reliable for quick shatters. Focus5 pops the phantasm right on top of the target.

D. Time Warp is handy every time your zerg front line is evenly matched at a choke point and a little more “oomph” will help turn the tide in your favor to break through or push them back. Or rout them completely. Time Warp is a serious tide-turner for your entire front line.

Give it a try. You don’t even have to retrait to try it out. Just grab a focus and practice the two combos that give you 14 seconds of Retaliation (each) back-to-back. The curtain > leap > swap combo is pretty easy to get down smooth.

Pyroatheist.9031:

Alrighty, got a few things to reply to

@windwalker: if high amounts of conditions are the problem in sPvp, why not take the other grandmaster trait, the one that removes conditions with shatters?

@shaktiboi: you’ve made some really interesting and innovative changes to the build. Here are some solutions for your problems though. Firstly, I never designed this build for normal zvz combat. You can actually do a frontline charge with it really really well, due to the on-demand projectile reflects and massive defense, but this build is definitely not designed for actually killing people in zvz. If you want to do that, I recommend the lolzy nuker build 30/30/0/0/10 full zerker with greatsword and 4x mantras for your 4x unblockable 1200 range attacks.

You have a point about people avoiding curtain, but here’s how you deal with it. Firstly, you can activate illusionary leap with a target out of range, and still get 1 leap finisher out of it.
Here is the big trick though, and requires a ton of battlefield awareness. You can drop the curtain, then detonate it for the pull. However, the combo field still persists on the ground for the normal duration, even though the actual curtain is gone. This means you can yank someone to you with the detonate, and then still get the 14 seconds of retaliation from the invisible combo field.

Great feedback. Didn’t know the detonate trick, will def try it out next run.

Update, spent 2 hours with the revised version I described above in Dubs this morning, then a bunch of misc PvE this afternoon getting the rest of the jumping puzzles for my monthly.

I still do use the curtain leap combo a lot, and I found that simply waiting for someone to commit themselves to you (like they try to close range and burst you, but you’ve switched to sword #2 and made them waste their burst). By this point, they’re often determined to get you anyway, so you calmly drop the curtain and they’re still right on top of you when you use leap and swap. Good times. Good times.

On the downside, if they’ve saved up an interrupt they can still interrupt you if they keep presence of mind, but so far so good overall.

I’ll also note that even without the 20% faster recharge on Focus trait, you can still keep up essentially full time retaliation when you want it. And full time speed buffs for you and everyone near you if you run 6X Centaur runes.

I forgot to mention earlier that I swapped out Illusionary Defender for Blink instead too. ID is just too slow to summon and of course in this variant Im not using Phantasms to heal or remove conditions. Blink is so seriously useful both offensively in ZvZ and defensively to gain distance over chasers (ESP if you have full time swiftness).

I also played for about an hour with GS on my other swap instead of Staff, and honestly, I score way more kills with that setup than with Staff in my swap. Between Blink and having Clones on dodge and Decoy (and the GS 5 knockback), I really didn’t notice the loss of Staff #2. And GS is so good at crippling runners and hits hard and both of its illusions pop right on the target for fast shatters to finish off someone at extreme range. One of the staff illusions pops too far from the target for consistent shatters.

Initial thoughts after playing with this all day yesterday in WvW.

So far, I’ve been liking 7Mirror’s Sword/Torch build, which is a slighly more tanky/stealth oriented shatter tank than the standard Shatter Cat.

So with that preamble:

Switching my 20 points in Dueling to Inspiration instead gives me a nice 19.7K HP, but drops my crit chance to 28%. No biggie, given the way this build relies on full-time retaliation (making up the crit losss via more partial reflect damage), right? Wellllll….

Given that 80% of most time in dubs is spent at zerg vs zerg front-lines, trying to push back the opposing zerg through attrition, my first impression is that losing the crit isn’t made up for by the gained full-time retaliation, for one simple reason. 80% of the time in a ZvZ faceoff, the target you are shooting at is NOT necessary shooting at you. In fact, most of the time not. So in a “damage race” to take down opposing bodies, higher crit = faster downs = fewer bodies = win for your side.

Next, while the Temporal Curtain > Illus Leap > Swap combo is indeed awesomesauce (much like the thief’s permastealth combo Black Powder > Heartseeker), I do find that it is “fiddly” to pull off. For one, it takes precious seconds to position yourself on the line, during which your opponent might have moved out of range of Illus Leap (which has an incredibly short range). If you could do an Illus Leap > Swap successfully with a distant target or no target, that would be great. But you can’t. Note that other combos such as eles use (RTL with no targets to gain distance in any direction you want), or such as thieves use (Black Powder + Heartseeker with no targets), require NO targets. But this combo does, and that target must be close enough to where you position the Temporal Curtain. And IMO that happens less than 50% of the time.

Worst of all, know that I know how this combo works, if I’m facing off against a mesmer and I see a temporal curtain get laid down, you can bet I’m just going to jink out of range of that curtain and deny them their 14 seconds of retaliation. It’s too easy to recognize and too easy to foil.

Now that all said, I do think it’s genius to combine this sword/focus combo with the trait that gives you 14-seconds of retaliation on a 3-illusion Cry of Frustration shatter. And it is very very nice when it works and you can keep both up back to back. And the situation where you can do that most reliably is PvE, lol. Not PvP. But in PvE? Mobs melt against you. It actually worked very nice in a Fractal run we did yesterday morning. But in PvP? Well….

… Where I’m at today is this: I really like Focus as my off-hand, and I really like being able to take advantage of the 14 extra seconds of retaliation I can squeeze out with this combo when it opportunistically happens. When an enemy is standing there in range after I lay down the curtain and I can nail them with the Leap/Swap. That 14 extra seconds of retaliation is gravy. But I think of it as “gravy”, not at something I can depend on and build around.

And I’m really really liking focus over torch. Between the 100% uptime on speed (if you wear 6x Centaur runes) and the occasion to opportunistically get an extra 14 seconds of retaliation, and the fact that Focus 5 pops right on top of the target making for fast shatters (compared to Torch 5 which pops too far from the target sometimes)… Well…

Basically what I’ve learned is that Focus is a better offhand weapon for 7Mirror’s shatter tank build than his preferred Torch offhand. That paltry one extra stealth that Torch gives you just isn’t nearly as utilitarian as what Focus can do for.

The other thing I’ve learned from trying out this build is to replace 7Mirror’s trait choice for 10% more crit chance on Mind Wrack to instead be your “Cry of Frustration causes retaliation”. I think that is a stronger overall choice than going from 40% crit chance on Mind Wrack to 50% crit chance.

So to sum up: My advice if you can’t afford a full set of P/V/T armor for the uber tanky 29K HP that PyroAthiest set up this build around, is to instead go heavy Knights ala 7Mirror’s build, then swap out his torch for Pyro’s Focus, and pick the 10-point trait in Illusions to be the “Cry of Frustration grants retaliation”, and then use that 14-seconds constantly at every opportunity, but consider the sword/focus combo an “extra goodie that’s nice when you can get it”.

Hope that all made sense, and hope it helps some other folks. Anyway, kudos to Pyro for giving us all some really good ideas and techniques to play with. I’d never have thought of a build concept like this on my own and I got some good techniques out of it.

CRrabbit.1284:

Last night I used my ranger soloed a 5-men team in wvw (yes 1v5, I am surprised too), in whole process I was like killing all of them for free, it seems that they can never even touch me.
Today I use guardian and met twice VS ranger 1v1, and I was killed both time, surprisingly, in both of time, I can’t see the ranger in whole process (1v1 so not culling issue and more than 2 mins), but I was able to see the arrow coming , so at last I have to use staff to hit the direction where arrow come from.
I have not found what trick to trigger this bug, but all 3 times, me + the other 2 rangers use cat as pet (that’s the only same thing I can recall) , I guess there must be some trick for cat pet to gain ranger perma stealth in WvW.
Hope someone who know how to do that can give us some hint.

Thank you. I knew I wasn’t crazy. Although I’m pretty sure the ranger that did it to me in WvW had canines out, but when everything is a generic “beast” model, perhaps they were jaguars and I just thought they were dogs. They were sleek, slender 4-legged creatures.

I’m guessing since Jaguar has “stealth itself” as a special property, perhaps there is a bugged trait that shares boons between ranger and pet that is somehow transferring stealth to the ranger (from the jaguar) in a perma-bugged state? Or something like that? Or not, lol.

All I know for sure is that accidental or not, I’ve seen a ranger who was unbeatable because they could just disappear as frequently and for as long as they wanted, literally every 5 seconds.

Macha.9160:

b2t:
I have run this build with precison/toughness/condition damage, as i just don’t have the karma or the dungeon-tokens to buy me the normal ones….
It’s amazing how easy i can take thiefs and wariors in wvw now. Even d/d eles most likey flee or sit it out till one raid comes and tries to finish the other one off.

I’m gonna change my gear to match yours pyroatheist but it will take me some time. But even without the proper gear i’m getting results. Most likely because noone would expect a mesmer too be this tanky

Im going to try it out this weekend with a gear set that’s optimized for 7Mirror’s shatter tank build (Sword/Torch), which is 4x Knights (pow/precision/tough) and 2x Soldiers (from cathedral Karma vendors) (pow/tough/vital), with all Knight’s weapons and 4x Ruby trinkets and 1x Karka Earring).

So: lots of Toughness compared to a typical ShatterCat, but of course not nearly as much vitality as PyroAthiest recommends. I’ll A-B the two builds over this same gear all weekend in dubs and report back Monday with how each performed with this setup.