Guild Wars 2

Hi Roy, the problems with your approach are many and I am sure I will not be the first nor the last to try and explain why.

The builds that will be substantially boosted by Perp runes are already very popular: pistol and shield Engineer, condition/fear Necromancer. In the Engineer’s case it is rare to see double pistols and yet this is the set that would benefit the least.

Perp runes are so powerful and setup-ambiguous that they can conceivably fit on anything in the game. The runes are still top-tier for a power setup with little to no investment in conditions or interrupts and you will see them on all kinds of classes and specs, because their bonuses are phenomenally strong for just a simple rune. The (4) alone is still a totally random source of pressure that would warrant a (6) on any other set and would still likely meet outcry. The tooltip doesn’t reveal this, but the (4) applies three stacks lasting five seconds, already surpassing in both intensity and duration a traited Cry of Frustration.

I would like to add that confusion is the only damaging condition in the game which suffers a -50% damage penalty in sPvP, and Mesmers have seen many traits rendered useless because of confusion’s potency in the eyes of the development team. Why then they are so bent on dishing it out like candy to everything under the sun is completely beyond me. Surely if it is so strong a rune like this has no reason to exist?

I urge you to reconsider this change, we have tried to give feedback in WvW and I can assure you it will only be reiterated by many other players here.

Psychogene.6780:

Blurred frenzy is one of those skills that is currently maximum reward for 0 risk. With its cooldown and the fact it can be so easily executed out of illusionary leap means pretty much every mesmer runs the sword as a weapon set.

Those 2 second of evasion has so much going for it you can pretty much spam this whenever its off cooldown and never get punished for it if you can dodge,teleport,stealth away. As an offensive tool, its more or less the mesmer’s version of 100 blades with a built in immunity button – this is probably a skill a warrior should have had rather then a mesmer, who really doesn’t need it due to the fact they practically have everything going for them in their favor.

My suggestion is to tone it down as a defensive tool, to stop people mindlessly spamming it to avoid damage. It should receive a penalty for this and rewarded if it hits. So something like this

‘Blurred Frenzy’, 10 sec cooldown -
If it strikes a foe, 10 sec cooldown. If it does not strike a foe or if your not hit in melee range, cooldown is 50% longer (15 secs).

So a nerf similar to ride the lightning for ele’s is how I can see this skill being more balanced. Also the shatter skills should be locked out while this move is being done.

I can guarantee you there are players in this game good enough to punish you extremely hard for spamming anything just because it’s off cooldown. They’ll dodge iLeap or MB and wait for the channel to end before smashing you in the face. And bar the fact that they’re both rooted channels 100b and BF have absolutely nothing in common. You can’t trait Blurred to proc Might on crit and the overall damage scaling between the two is worlds apart.

Personally I hope the RtL nerf gets reverted, it was a complete mistake and kitten a class hard for the sake of a few poorly-designed sPvP maps.

And ladies and gents, you don’t have to qualify everything you say with, “I play a Mesmer…” or “I’m a Mesmer player too, so […]”. If your opinions are sound and backed up by truth and knowledge, they’ll stand on their own.

I will go on record as saying that the recent change to Illusionary Leap may have been the most ill-advised in the game’s history. Who in their right mind took an appraisal of the game as it stands right now and decided this skill needed added punishment?

The ability — leaving aside its tremendous pathing and consistency issues — is now badly out of sync with comparable skills. Infilitrator’s Strike (Thief) and Flashing Blade (Guardian) are both instant-cast, can be used well out of range to act as a medium displacement and neither of these has a glaring telegraph like a marathon-sprinting bright red clone screaming “DODGE NOW”. I understand the clone can be seen as a positive in the resource sense (on some setups) but Illusionary Leap even has a blinking UI warning as a second telegraph!

Here are some of the ways you can currently counter this skill:

- Dodge the clone
- Evade the clone
- Walk away from the clone (can be outpaced with swiftness etc.)
- Evade the swap
- Displace yourself (Blink, Shadowstep, Phase Retreat, Acid Bomb, Lightning Flash)
- Invuln/pseudo-invuln (Ranger/Warrior blocks, Shelter)
- Dodge during the swap (you will still displace yourself during the immobilize)
- Destroy the clone
- CC the clone (fear, chill, cripple etc.)
- Stealth (clone won’t follow laterally)
- Kite outside of range
- Cleanse the cripple and move
- Cleanse the immobilize
- Abuse the z-axis (pathing issues, does not act as a port without a successful swap)

I urge the devs to please revert this change back if nothing else. Players could still destroy the clone beforehand, the Mesmer just had a port to where the clone would’ve been at the time of destruction as compensate. This recent change has borderline spelled doom for the sword anywhere beyond beginner-level play.

- Blissless

I have recently fallen in love with Giganticus Lupicus! I love everything about him, from his doggy dog charms to his appropriately monstrous health pool.

Learning to fight him alone with a DPS-heavy setup is a real kick. You get better as you learn his animations and eventually you can even predict and bait out his next attacks (particularly in P1). For the most part, when you mess up you get punished for it, and while you can often recover, even if you do go down you know it was due to a mistake you can correct next time.

Could ANet possibly spare a few dev hours to give us moar solo-ish super tough bosses like Lupi? I’m certain there are others like me who really enjoyed doing this, it feels like one of the few bright spots in PvE that do GW2’s action/reactive gameplay justice.

What people don’t seem to grasp is that because of the existence of an open TP, making farming ‘easier’ will not improve their lot in the slightest. Unless you’re farming for a specific item (and let’s be honest, that’s pretty rare) it makes no difference how easy or hard it is to farm, because the market’ll adjust itself either way. When items are easy to farm, you’ll make less gold per hour and buy items at cheaper prices. When items are hard to farm, you’ll make more gold per hour and buy items at expensive prices. It’s a wash.

I’m not really here to comment about the kill/damage in question, but if someone hits a triple Heartseeker then no, they don’t have a lot of stealth at all, so I’m not sure what the title of the thread is supposed to relate to. It doesn’t even look like he landed a second CnD since it didn’t register on the log.

Phaeton.9582:

You’re really suggesting more tooltip changes?

Oh, not at all muffin, I’m suggesting that they follow the lead taken with Illusionary Leap and change the skill to match the tooltip. I know, I know — sounds like a lot of work compared to just rewriting tooltips, but that’s why we’re here to help support our devs in getting their ‘vision’ of the game on track.

oZii.2864:

Why are people saying earth is that bad? I mean every D/D ele goes into earth and every s/d ele likes to start in earth and swap to air for 15 air procs.

Earth also has very good damage traits. It just sounds like alot of people are trying to imagine moving a whole 30 points from their previous build to pick up one of these and just don’t see it working. When these are traits to build around.

D/D’s build around 20+water and 30 arcana
S/D’s and s/f build around 30 air

Why can’t there be a build based around 30 earth?

I don’t understand the logic here. Do 30 Air eles stay in Air? Do 30 water eles stay in water? NO so why are we saying 30 earth is trash because nobody stays in earth? Cleansing water is trash because no ele stays in water and water certainly doesn’t have good damage at all. I don’t even understand how this is a thing because nobody stays in a attunement for long except maybe a staff Ele.

If you D/D the attunement you stay in the longest is Air if a burst is coming in you swap to earth! I would rather reduce a burst by 150% + whatever crit damage they have then have protection up. That is what stone heart will do reduce any incoming damage by a guaranteed 150%+ if that hit was going to crit.

I agree completely that there’s a difference between strengthening one attunement with a goal or an overarching strategy in mind and simply camping it, which I don’t think is viable or even really intended. Just as you’ve said, a typical burst Ele for example will mostly rely on Air, but Earth plays a strong part in setting up burst (and anticipating it if you’re playing Focus), Fire has its Phoenix, area denial and might potential and even Water is another means of control and sustain.

The really beautiful thing and what I truly admire about Ele’s design is that your attunements and the abilities associated with them are so useful if you think about the ways to use them that you’re never “defeated” at the trait window, so to speak. If you don’t have a purpose in mind for the traits you’re choosing when investing in Earth, then you’ll likely be dissatisfied, but it has nothing to do with the merit of Earth Magic or Earth Attunement itself: if I want some protection for channelling Ether Renewal, then Earth VIII and Arcane Shield works very well for me. Even if I then leave Earth Attunement, I can consider the points well spent because they kept me safe from possibly lethal circumstances. So in the broader picture the points into Earth bolstered my performance in all attunements.

Earth Magic rewards and encourages conservation of endurance and close-quarters aggression on the Elementalist’s part. Water favors sustain, healing and building strength over time. Arcana is ambiguous and can be drawn for the most part in any way a player wishes. On the whole, if you go deep into Earth then you are likely going to favor a burstier, more aggressive strategy, since you are traited more into taking and reacting to hits and less into sustain. I think some of the complaints from players about Earth is that they perhaps expect Earth to pull Water’s horse in the sustain and cleansing department and become disappointed when it doesn’t. But if Earth doesn’t work for you then there’s no shame in going for Water instead. The trait points are always yours to spend.

The magic lines themselves aren’t really about singling out a single attunement, per se, but rather about tailoring the Elementalist in a direction that favors the goal, rotations and temperament of the player. This often means benefits to the magic line’s attunement, but it’s not an imperative to just sit in said attunement all day. That’s coming at the Elementalist from a fundamental misconception I feel.

Why do Physical skills (Kick, Stomp, Bolas) have such tremendous cooldowns compared to their effects?

Kick (small AoE knockback, very, very short range, low-to-moderate damage) is on a 20 second cooldown. Why? Shouldn’t it be something like 10-12, considering it’s just a kick with your foot that’ll at best act as an interrupt?

Stomp (moderate damage, small radius hard CC) clocks in at a whopping 60 seconds. This one is almost as absurd as Endure being a boosack-shattering 1:30 min CD

Bolas is at 20. Very long-lasting Immob so I can sort of see the reasoning but by the same token it has negligible damage and it’s a single-target util skill.

My feeling is that people so rarely take Physicals because aside from them struggling to compete with the necessary sustain/condi removal War utils, they have crazy-high cooldowns in comparison to their in-game effects. It doesn’t help that the only CDR trait is a Grandmaster in an otherwise-unappealing trait line.

Zelanard.5806:

I did a little reserch to see how powerfull these sigils can really get, heres what i got:
with 25 stacks of might, 160 bonus power from a frozen fish snack, 300 from the trait, full berserker ascended equipement wepaons and trinkets, rune of strength, a slayer sigil, banner of strength, signet of might and empower allies, these things can do at the very most 3088 damage, on an enemy, wearing basic (white) armor…
put the dude in an exotic armor for a moment: There, its reduced to 2468…
The damage is on an enemy that is using NO toughness except the basic attribute… and this is of course in accordance to the wikis formulas, so its questionable numbers. however, if the wiki is correct, those sigils are giving the users, 50% of 1 basic attack as an addition to its normal critical damage… I don’t think that’s OP at all…

It isn’t the raw numbers, it’s the investment → return ratio that peeves a lot of people. It also doesn’t help that they’re basically random, so you’re going to get hit by them eventually no matter how you play.

I think you could make a case for both sides ‘til the cows come home, but personally I don’t like them.

I started playing the game again recently and apparently the entire solo queue system has been removed. As someone who has little interest in a mixed queue (and I believe many others feel likewise) this is a bit of a bummer for me.

Has there been any stated reason for this? I don’t really understand ArenaNet’s obsession with gutting out game content, but perhaps there was at least a qualification in this case?

As much as I do want sPvPers to be rewarded, I’d be against this. Fractals are supposed to be prestige PvE content and it’s already hard enough to find the incentive to do it.

Confusion probably should’ve been a Mesmer-only thing but they threw that out the window a long time ago, so.

While I don’t think Thief heal skills need to be even more loaded with functions, I do agree with the OP that the spirit of the heal isn’t being reflected. It’s incredibly obvious that it’s supposed to remove all DoTs.

Pride.1734:

You know this was done so quickly for the tournament right?
Btw its no nerf it was a bug =_=
It applies to other classes and all NPC in general.

I’m sure that’s why they bothered to change Dhuumfire or the bugged Ranger elite before PAX, right?

draconx.3102:

Let’s talk about the bugs and how the list is getting bigger instead of smaller, rather than balance/l2p issues.

The only bug with mesmer downed skills I’m aware of is the rogue not attacking (same as the warden), which is on the list.

The problem is that it’s almost impossible to tell which “bugs” are failed attempts at balance and which are legitimate quirks or errors in patching.

Was Power Block “bugged”? I think it’s highly questionable and I’m not the only one. Is distortion currently bugged? If so, how on earth do you even introduce a bug like that? Was removing protection from on-cast Chaos Armor a “bug fix”? LoS? Blurred Frenzy? (I’m sure the devs would love for you to think that last one was just bug-fixing).

The guise of making every single change under the auspices of “bug-fixing” is getting tiring, and it’s starting to come off as a cheap means of deflecting criticism.

Stealth doesn’t really have a lot to do with the issues between Thieves and Mesmers.

Siva Mira.3546:

Trahearne: “This won’t end well.”

/10char

I think she probably took 30 into Shadow Arts for maximum outplay potential.

Andy.9137:

maeggle.6021:

Why give them traits like IP when most condition and hybrid engineer builds already can reapply strong conditions faster then necros while having better access to defensive spells and boons? I don’t see how IP improves overall gameplay, player skill and fun for all players involved.

It’s so we are not forced into one specific kit to have access to burning.

Oh, heaven forbid!

Illusionary Leap was once an exemplary skill. It was versatile, well-telegraphed, balanced between offense and defense (which suited the sword) and allowed for maximum creativity on the part of the Mesmer.

Infiltrator’s Strike and Flashing Blade are terrible design. There is no telegraph, only anticipation (or reaction): skills like these are part of the reason heavy invulnerable uptime is prized in top-level play. Illusionary Leap does not need to become more like these abilities.

If it simply isn’t possible to fix the clone pathing and make it reliable, then why not set the casting time onto Swap instead of Illusionary Leap? I would gladly forgive the stun break to keep this skill from being just as overbearing as all the other instant-casts in the game.

I really urge the devs to reconsider what they’re doing here. I understand that other Mesmers have long pushed for this change but I strongly feel it’s in error. There have to be better ways to go about fixing this skill.

the problem is that anet has been too kind to people on ancient or very low-end machines. the game’s still running on DX9 and it massively prioritizes CPU power over any peripheral GPU, probably because casual players on low-end machines are more likely to have stronger processors than graphics cards.

even then, the engine’s resource management is horrendous. even with your GPU gathering dust, multiple CPU cores are wasted because the engine is optimized solely for single-thread management like it’s still 2005 or something.

there’s no consumer hardware on the market that can run this game at a consistent 60+ in any and all areas. your performance is tied almost entirely to your clock speed, something that’s far harder to upgrade than a GPU, and once you’ve clocked to ~4.5ish (enjoy that hefy liquid cooling price tag to boot) you’re pretty much done.

anet basically tried to aim for way too wide a market and ended up pleasing no one.

Playing an Asura by far.

Zepidel.5349:

Why do I always read that conditions are amazing / borderline OP in PvP? Are these just scrubs spouting this?

My experience with condition specs has been god awful in PvP, let me explain.

Mesmer: Literally HELL mode for me, They have a mantra that can instantly remove 3 conditions instantly 3 times with no cd (this effects all allies around them too), Null field basically makes anyone standing in it immune to conditions for the time its up, a phantasm that removes conditions. and any projetile that goes through the fields they pop up removes conditions. Then they have a skill that trades 3 of your boons for 3 of the conditions they have onto you.

I want to point out that the cleanse Mantra clears two conditions, not three, and that a Mesmer needs 30 points in Dom and a GM trait to use it three times (it gets two charges by default). Mantras also require a long channel and are vulnerable to being interrupted.

Mesmers can cleanse well but it’s all active and comes at a heavy cost.

Highlie.7641:

Do you really believe that? I pity you if you do… you do realize they dumbed down the combat for Pvp right?

This silly WvW canard is why you’ll never improve

I dunno but I love Temple and I could be set quite happy in a queue with just that map alone really.

Agreed OP, seems a bit odd considering pretty much everything else in the game doesn’t imitate the old server-wide node, every man for himself model. I don’t know why they chose these holos of all things to do a total 180 but it’s certainly rather lame.

Hi, r40 sPvP, ~3k hours on Mes, bought 2k gems in the last few weeks

The proposed changes to DE are terribly misplaced and a negative on the whole.

Playing shatter, there are many, many times where you want the control of an immediate clone in melee range. This can be as an interrupt to ward off a foe, more damage for pressuring a downed player, or simply because positioning has changed in the short term (Mesmer has many instantaneous blinks so this is not a rare occurrence).

If clone death traits are a problem, why not change the traits themselves? They’re already set to ignore shatter conditions so the framework is there — just make them proc solely on death from actual player damage. This would be far less invasive than reworking a trait that has impact on hundreds of players who do not use these traits at all.

I deeply implore the devs to reconsider this change, it will make the Mesmer a less enjoyable and simpler class to play as a result. I am not sure why the team is pushing us towards a “turtling” style where three illusions (in their eyes, ideally phantasms) are kept up at all times but it is a mark down in all categories from the fast and fluid feeling one gets playing traditional Mes.

— Bliss

Coming from someone who crafts most of their own consumables, the price of Lemongrass has little if anything to do with demand. It’s expensive because Lemongrass itself is pretty rare (there’s only one map zone I know of in the entire game with a Lemongrass loot table, and that table has a lot of other entries competing for space).

It’s the same for Curry Butternut, which is expensive because Peppers were shifted off from Karma vendors and onto very (very) rare loot tables in low level Ascalon. Take a look at the price of Lemongrass and Chili Pepper and compare them to their recipes if you don’t believe me.

I also find it rather absurd that condi builds in WvW complain about Lemongrass when they’re usually running Veggie Pizza (+40% duration). If you’re trying to overclock your character with consumables and someone else is doing the same, then why the hypocrisy?

One little trick I discovered: if you equip Portal and drop the Portal Entre, you can swap out Portal on your util bar for any other skill and use it as much as you want, then swap Portal back in and set up a port without any issue.

In other words (an example):

- Drop Portal Entre
- Swap Portal out for Decoy
- Use Decoy
- Swap Decoy for Portal again (must be OOC)
- Drop Portal Exeunt

(Crosspost from the balance boards, not sure how many read this one)

Hi, r40 sPvP, ~3k hours on Mes, bought 2k gems in the last few weeks

The proposed changes to DE are terribly misguided and a negative on the whole.

Playing shatter, there are many, many times where you want the control of an immediate clone in melee range. This can be as an interrupt to ward off a foe, more damage for pressuring a downed player, or simply because positioning has changed in the short term (Mesmer has many instantaneous blinks so this is not a rare occurrence).

If clone death traits are a problem, why not change the traits themselves? They’re already set to ignore shatter conditions so the framework is there — just make them proc solely on death from actual player damage. This would be far less invasive than reworking a trait that has impact on hundreds of players who do not use these traits at all.

I deeply implore the devs to reconsider this change, it will make the Mesmer a less enjoyable and simpler class to play as a result. I am not sure why the team is pushing us towards a “turtling” style where three illusions (in their eyes, ideally phantasms) are kept up at all times but it is a mark down in all categories from the fast and fluid feeling one gets playing traditional Mes.

— Bliss

One of the many wonderful features of this clearly well-tested, expertly-crafted mission (not quite ekeing out the turbo mobs or the “Unknown dealt 6,000 damage with Explode”) is that the pathing on some of the vets that jump around is broken to the point where they’ll reset if you’re at their spawn point. This means they’re almost constantly regenning no matter where you are and without creative use of leashing it’s a phenomenal slog.

DoYourBestBear.6810:

You know – we had talked about that the other day and I agree. While some people will submit that the root cause would be online games, people, or our generation of gamers – I would disagree and submit the community size as the cause, along with everything else Steb said.

I came here from GW1 expecting another amazing community. IVEX and other guilds in GW1 felt like an actual team that was there to try, learn, and progress as players. The community had little discord (except for where a guild or two were concerned as the sole source of much aggression), players generally assisted each other in becoming better – even across different teams. Even at the top of the ladder, there was little, if any, BM.

Coming to the GW2 community was like going to McDonald’s instead of that really nice restaurant you love – just because they promised you good food.

I think it’s mostly the size (so small) and the tension and longing that the game is gonna see better days. Let’s be honest, we all log in every so often thinking for some silly reason that today’ll be when GW2 turns around and all that potential will finally begin to bear fruit. The game feels like being stuck at a bus terminal in a foreign country for seven hours. It doesn’t excuse anything don’t get me wrong, but it’s far from the healthiest environment especially for such a small community to stick in day in day out for too long.

Mbelch.9028:

shimmerless.4560:

Lettuce.2945:

shimmerless.4560:

The WvW raging and grudge-holding against Narcarsis (who has always played a more difficult team-oriented game) is embarrassing, and I say this as someone who has played nothing but WvW for the overwhelming majority of my time in GW2. This is coming from people who are almost allergic to playing non-crutch setups and who think that the game works as some kind of duel simulator when you aren’t mirroring or at least running meta specs. “Build wars”? The entire game (and especially your made-up version of it) is build wars, funny how you people never seem to have issues when it’s in your favour.

Your understanding of the game is frankly limited in the extreme and you are entertaining yourselves with a fantasy rulebook that’s made entirely of your own doing. It has no sanction or approval from the devs. Just grow up already.

Maybe you should learn to read before going on a nonsense rant like you just did? Grow up. Re read the entire thread then re read what you just said and you’ll see how way off the point you just were.

Just in case you are too much of a simpleton to figure it out, they mirror dueled. No build wars going on here, bud.

Mbelch.9028:

Anyways, addressing the “lost all the duels” yes, but really is that an accomplishment for you? Beating a valk d/d ele with P/D? I could easily switch to D/F and win, but then you could switch to D/P and just survive.
You’re playing build wars two here, nothing more, nothing less.

Yes reading comprehension is so hard, honey. Then again I suppose my mind would be just as addled were I still a Wubwub hero.

You had no problem raging at fear in 2013 in game, please don’t be so coy here.

What a joke. I have no food for the troll, and besides, I was speaking to Caed, not you.

Excuse me? Are you confused with someone else? I have never been familiar with yourself nor your guild in game (let alone in 2013?) and the sole reason you stand out at all is that you dog-piled and trashed on Caed’s thread about a D/P guide which myself and many others would have rather appreciated.

Oh and by the same token, I was responding to Lettuce.2945, not yourself. You are a hopeless case at this point hon.

I think we are perhaps at a crossroads. I can’t seem to convince you that Blurred Frenzy isn’t quite as powerful as you make it out to be, and I likewise doubt you’ll convince me on the merits of letting retal go through it.

You seem a little fixated on the (relatively) low cooldown of Blurred Frenzy. This is a deceptive line of thinking. Take Obsidian Flesh for example. It has roughly four times the cooldown, but you are not rooted in place, you can use all other abilities (and attunement swaps) and it can even be used while stunned. In the hands of a knowledgeable player this skill can be just as if not more effective than a Mesmer’s sword on a more regular basis. Simply moving away from a glass Elementalist is not going to cut it when he uses this skill. On a similar note evades like Flanking Strike and Disabling Shot have no cooldown at all.

On the whole sword is a balanced weapon that errs on the side of defense. This is true for all the classes who can use a sword. Rangers have a total of ~1.5 seconds of evade uptime and heal denial, Guardians have a full projectile block, Warriors and Thieves have a displacement that doesn’t require a target (and in the case of Thieves it clears a condition). Of course retal can go through an evade, but this is misleading since the only comparable multi-hit skill is Pistol Whip, which did have issues with retal until the Trickery line was buffed.

When you approach skills holistically you understand why it is folly to cross-compare too much. One of the key differences between a Mesmer’s sword and another class’ set and a good reason it’s unwise to balance it out of context is that our sword is heavily weighted on the effectiveness of Blurred Frenzy. We are the only light class trying to use one and if we have to stand in place for two seconds it needs to be for a very good reason. (Swap has some defensive uses but it is much less reliable). Twelve seconds may sound short but it is a very long time for a glassy Mesmer, which is why skills and their cooldowns are so relative. But if players are still having trouble trying to combat this skill without abusing retal then I don’t know what more I can say.

My impression at this point in the game is that the developers are somewhat naive and don’t really play that much; at the very least, they’re unaware of just what is capable with the current mechanics. They know vaguely what it is they want to do, but they don’t seem to know how to properly do it.

Hurting Mesmer Vigor when it’s possible for a Warrior with an adept trait and Lyssa runes to keep close to permanent uptime or an Acro Thief to have total permanent uptime just intimates that the devs are out of touch. Even more so when you consider that a Mesmer needs to crit and the latter two can keep Vigor up at range or even out of combat entirely.

All of the changes sound amazing John, really looking forward to it.

I agree with Taevion that if the illusion’s speed on Illusionary Leap isn’t made faster, then the cripple has to be stronger, because currently it is one of the most forgiving skills in the game to dodge and players can get the benefits of a full dodge frame even while immobilized because they happened to start just before the swap.

This would also help the depth of the skill since it would be stronger at baiting out premature dodges.

GW2 has very deep-seated issues that are a natural consequence of many different game mechanics and design decisions made (intentionally or not) during development. I will always give this game credit for having wild ambition (and for being the wonderful Mesmer’s second outing) but it is frankly impossible to ignore GW2’s gaping flaws.

Damage output across the board is much too high (probably as a consequence of ANet refusing to split PvE/PvP). This and a lack of cast bars on otherwise poorly-telegraphed attacks also leads to tremendous amounts of block and evade uptime to keep the TTK ratio from becoming completely obscene. Since every class has to have a bit of A and a touch of B, conditions like burning are completely trivialized and end up becoming this constant source of blind pressure damage like so many other passive factors.

Skills have little situational use, and thanks to the lack of a mana system there’s often a low (to non-existent in the case of “condition” builds) opportunity cost, meaning many are just chained off cooldown. For the Mes we really lost the ability to control and set up spikes as well as dominate the direction of a team engagement, in exchange for gimmicks like stealth which don’t carry to competitive-level play. The lowered skill ceiling hurts the natural drive players have to better themselves at their class.

What it boils down to, though, is that because of the way a lot of things interplay in this game — because of the existence of certain equipment and specs — there’s really little difference in effectiveness between an average player and a skilled one. I confess that myself and many friends have had trouble guessing whether a particularly effective decision was made by a player intentionally or just through sheer dumb luck. In my view events in this game tend to be due to the latter more often than not.

Specs are so simple to play and so strong right out of the box that someone new to said spec can toy around for a couple hours and achieve comparable results to someone who’s been playing the same class for six months. This cold truth effectively natches competition and quells any desire to log in for practice, and so players eventually just don’t log in.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

SonOfKrypton.4357:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180

In other words, you are saying that you want to continue building glass cannon, but you also want the survivability of a bunker..

The solution is to just use Dire gear. As much damage as a glass cannon and survivability out the nose! ^^

Can I get wrong answers for $500, Alex?

Dire gear is quite durable, yes, but it is lower damage than Soldier’s, which is the power equivalent. Condition builds need Precision badly to proc sigils and on-crit traits.

Even without Precision or Crit damage, Power has a multiplicative effect on damage due to the damage calculations ((weapon damage*power)+(power* skill coefficient)) Condition damage…doesn’t.

Soldier’s only does higher damage on paper, and even then it is under highly artificial constraints where two mirror classes are punching each other without using any skills or moving. The comparison is meaningless because there is no context.

In theory Killshot should inflict up to four or five times the damage that a Blood Curse chain would in the same time, but which is really more likely to land its damage complement? On paper Soldier’s will also prove superior in a slug fest to a glassy amulet due to superior sustain, but would a Soldier’s longbow Ranger really overcome a glassy dueling class? Reality completely throws these tidbits out the window.

This recent meme that Soldier’s outdamages even glassy condition specs is just pure sophistry! It’s based on fluff and rhetorical distortion. It doesn’t reflect the reality of how the game is actually played, doesn’t take into consideration any of the hundreds of varying aspects that go into how effective skills and stats are in the end.

Shriketalon.1937:

shimmerless.4560:

Condi autos aren’t fine, and Mes clones are what’d make it a balance nightmare, never mind push it “overboard”. This whole thing with conditions and DoTs needs a serious rework (along with a pass on this game’s tremendous amount of AoE) and I’d much rather they wouldn’t toss the scepter into the muck ahead of time.

Serious, non-confrontational question.

Do you consider the Staff to be overboard? It does exactly what you describe. The autoattack inflicts conditions and the clones inflict the exact same DoT list. Is the staff currently overpowered in PvP, dominating WvW, or completely outclassing other weapons in PvE? Does the mesmer Staff define the competitive metagame in any way, shape, or form?

I understand the resistance to making a dull, spammy weapon. But that doesn’t mean that a condition weapon cannot have a condition autoattack (because that’s the damage type they’re supposed to deal out) or have clones that do something significant. It can have strings attached to reward tactical play and the other weapon skills can be the more significant portion of the weapon’s smiting potential, but it should still be doing everything it can to be a “tricksy defender” weapon.

It’s a non-sequitur of a question. Staff is competitive, by the way, but it’s kept in line by a few factors (some of which, like WoC, are almost certainly by design because of our class mechanic):

-#1 is RNG and has a 1/3 wildcard thrown in
-Slow windup to reach its full potential
-Chaos Armor has been nerfed
-A PU Mes can’t force an engagement in WvW and overdoing stealth hurts your ability to decap/defend in sPvP

No matter how you revamp the scepter to make it more like the staff, in any case, it’s not the scepter that’s doing the tricksy defending for you, it’s the Rabid amulet. This is really what I don’t want to see.

Jeffrey Vaughn.1793:

I’ve reduced the veteran levels so they’re L59. I suspect they were up-levelled back when veteran were a lot weaker than they are now. I don’t have an ETA for when this change will reach Live, though, sorry!

The issue is not with the mob levels, it’s that (among many, many other things) there are two mobs at the end (the Risen Acolytes) which infinitely spawn regular mobs. The courtyard fast runs out of allied NPCs (who all die fast) to draw aggro and so you’re essentially stuck at being swamped by ~40 to 50 mobs.

It’d be appreciated if this were at least put in the dev tracker so I don’t have to run around the forums just to know if this is even working as intended or not.

Out of interest are you brainstorming these entirely on your own, Super? Because they’re almost all astonishingly good ideas.

Or of course, they could just get rid of immobilize stacking and refrain from fiddling with skills that were perfectly fine before the unasked-for change.

I’m rather shocked. What happened to #ELEtism, my loves? Perhaps your poor minds have calcified from aeons of Elementalist subforum posting and waiting dew-eyed for the latest Elementalist buffs that’ll make all your instant win dreams come true. Fret not, there is always a light at the end of the tunnel. Simply open your minds; the OP’s spec could very well be the answer you’re searching for, and it’s right here in front of your ascended noses.

If the strengths of Attunejam’s Glyphmentalist spec aren’t making themselves clear, perhaps you ought to broaden your horizons? I’ve heard quasi-legal hallucinogenics are a useful tonic for that sort of thing. Or, you know, take a walk in this fresh summer air. Dwell on the nature of Elemental Attunement, boon duration, zone control, all that lark.

As our patron goddess of candi-spamm management Lyssa has sagely intoned:

“Many have eyes, but few have seen.”

Whoever in their right mind is still playing WvW at this point is pretty much going to be part of the dregs that enjoy AFK/condition specs. If ANet had ever wanted to stop the bleeding that ship has long since sailed.

there’s a lot of people who never owned a NES/SNES/mega drive playing this game

Pwent.2639:

Well i hate to complain about any update, but why torment are they trying to phase out confusion?

You’re completely right, love. We’ve just come full circle to something that didn’t need changing to begin with, except now it’s in a much weaker spot and far more classes have access to our own confusion to boot. Nothing has been hit quite as hard as confusion over the course of the game (other than perhaps old Ele sustain) and yet the devs just can’t seem to stop handing it out like candy to everyone but Mesmers themselves.

dancingmonkey.4902:

How so?

How much damage per second can the P/P, P/S, or rifle put out with this trait that makes it a problem?

This was one trait that was mentioned as being a selection to assist the very low damage weapons. I have seem this thread remade multiple times, yet I have never seen anyone justify how this effects DPS levels to justify a worthy complaint in my eyes.

The fact that you call this a “main source” of damage without showing one iota of proof that it out damages any weapon set at all (because it doesn’t) is a clear display you are not looking for an honest discussion on the subject.

If it’s not a main source of damage then why isn’t there a single meta spec that skips the trait?