Guild Wars 2

shadowpass.4236:

OMFG I hate this. I typed a whole long post explaining a ton of tactics to use against thieves and mesmers and when I clicked post, it said this page is unavailable >.> when I hit go back, I lost it all.

kitten this kitten it all

:( My sympathies, horrible when that happens.

This further supports the point of view that elite trait lines will be mandatory from now into the future, because this change is solely based around Shield 4 and Chronophantasma.

Same with the Mental Defence nerf – and leaving the utility skill cooldown alone? Doesn’t make sense and again assumes Chronophantasma and Persistence of Memory are being used.

But I don’t care because I neither use Shield or use Persistence of Memory. Actually I’m happy because I’ll have an easier time fighting mesmers who use Shield. :}

OriOri.8724:

Curunen.8729:

Blude.6812:

If they would introduce more mastery points to the core game, I wouldn’t mind. But the points I need to to complete the only mastery left are tied to personal story repeats and a lot of activities that are nothing more than a grind.
They have added new points to the living story, how about making the next few batches red instead of green.

This so much.

HoT mastery points are so easy to accumulate I’d imagine many people are drowning in excess green points right now.

Red points are so much harder especially if you also max out Legendary and Fractal masteries…

There are plenty of MP in core tyria. Not all of them are supposed to be trivial to achieve, you should have to put effort in to max all of the masteries. Besides, what this really comes down to is which mastery line is more important to you? Being able to craft the new legendaries or autoloot? If autoloot is more important than legendary crafting to anyone in this thread, yet they maxed leg crafting first and are now hurting for mastery points, I don’t know what to tell you other than plan stuff out better.

I’ve maxxed legendary and have max experience for both fractal and pact commander. I currently require 11 core mastery points to finish off.

On the other hand I’ve maxxed all HoT masteries and (I can’t check exact amount because not at computer right now) have more than a handful of green points building up, which just keep increasing with every living world release. It’s so kitten easy to earn HoT mastery points.

The only remaining core mastery points for me are locked behind living story achievements, stupid achievements like Dive Master and unlocking every single cultural armour.

I personally don’t care much for autoloot or accessing mistlock singularities, however in my eyes it is far far easier to gain way more HoT mastery points than necessary than it is to gain enough core tyria mastery points because they’re accessible through easier achievements.

DuckDuckBOOM.4097:

Ithilwen.1529:

Exactly what Mesmer doesn’t need is more melee. I really would not like an axe as a weapon. If it must be, make it a boomerang type projectile weapon.. something like Chieftain Uhtahein’s throwing axe.

We have three ranged weapons and only 1 low dps power utility melee. We need more melee options

I agree, especially if Mirage traitline gives both us and illusions interesting ways of sustaining in melee range. It should be fun.

Also who really takes MH sword for damage outside of power builds in pve. Most of the time it’s just for easy access to evade and kiting of ileap, given how weak BF is offensively and the auto attack.

Warlord of Chaos.7845:

Also if any of you bring asura to the duel, I will bring mine as well. Its such a huge advantage to play that against charr lol.

Not when the charr is capable of eating said asura, whole. :p

I can understand if all hands are on deck to finish HoT, so this doesn’t bother me this year.

Yeah, shield blocks have allowed me to stop crying over the loss of old Mimic bubble shield.

And it doesn’t require any silly things like catching your own bouncing projectile to block…

apharma.3741:

As for PU, it’s fine as is. It’s a GM, build defining trait which is exactly what ANet wanted. It wasn’t fine at +1 second as only 1 build in 1 game mode ever took it. Before the boon nerf power builds could take it for the guarantee of something defensive when they stealth, afterwards it was not worth it at all which is why they went for IP as being able to use distortion whenever was more viable.

It wasn’t commonly taken because we didn’t have access to 3 full traitlines simultaneously, and IP required using 6 or 30 points in Illusions.

People even tried before to run shatter builds without DE in order to go 6 points in Chaos and 6 points in Illusions, because even at +1second with the boons it was very strong and almost worth the sacrifice of DE.

Now it [PU] is pretty much a free choice, no sacrifice needed.

It didn’t need buffing at all.

What the strengths/weaknesses/kryptonite should be, rather than are?

I don’t believe any profession should be pigeonholed into exact strengths/weaknesses, and none of them should have a “kryptonite” – there should be no hard counters (ie S/x thief vs shatter mesmer).

Every profession should be able to be built in a variety of ways and it should be up to the player to decide what strengths/weaknesses he or she wants in the specific build, whether that is:
- good/bad burst or sustained direct or condition damage
- good/bad aoe abilities or single target focused abilities
- good/bad condition removal, passive or active defence through stats or abilities
- good/bad crowd control and support mechanics
- and so on…

All of that should be possible for every profession, and it should be up to the player to decide what compromise to make.

Professions should mostly be adding flavour through their unique mechanics – do you want to feel like captain planet or inspector gadget. However the effect of these mechanics should not be restricted to a profession but the choice given to the players instead.

Don’t worry, my keybinding is incredibly compact – half of them are on the mouse.

It’s nothing to do with reaching keys, more to do with where you feel a particular skill should be – after a certain period of time you get a feel for whether a particular pattern of keypressing flows well or not.

I would so love a One handed Sword with Astralaria’s visual effects.

So beautiful, the deep blue is much nicer than twilight.

Conclusion #1:

The next BWE can’t come soon enough!

Invictorum.7643:

Run into a bansh- err… Daredevil? Detonate your tech, wait, Chaos armor.

lol, someone remembers tech armour for everything. xD

AlphatheWhite.9351:

Curunen.8729:

Embolism.8106:

Duel/Chaos/Illu is an easier condi build to play but I think I can safely say that X/Illu/Chrono is stronger overall.

Yeah I agree.

x/Illusions/Chrono is better for damage output/cooldowns, but lacks the survivability traits that you can get with Duelling/Chaos/Illusions or Duelling/Inspiration/Illusions (ie traited mirror/blink, protection/regen, pDefender, condi clear, stability/boons etc…).

^
A lot of the chrono’s new survivability is in that shield block, and shield does very little for condi atm. Well of Precognition is an option, but condi mesmers are even more tight on utilities than other mesmers (since in addition to Blink/Decoy/Portal/Feedback/Condiclear, we also have Signet of Midnight and Signet of Dom competing for our attention).

I only got to test briefly on Sunday but I found playing Duelling/Illusions/Chrono condi I was able to trait Desperate Decoy and take Blink/MoResolve/WoPrecognition and felt it worked well around using prestige/MI as the stealth skills. I find I only need two – loosely one as an “oh kitten” gtfo button and the other to use offensively.

There was less chance of accidently causing reveal on self when needing to use actual Decoy because of spending less time in stealth thanks to the well of precognition, and for the first time ever I found the traited Decoy to be half decent.

I was very happy because the well offered more on point presence, group fight survivability and less enemy moaning about “perma” stealth. xD

Erm, not only does mesmer iLeap require a target to even spawn a clone, half the time the clone gets stuck on terrain or doesn’t make it to the target for whatever reason, and then you have to swap to blink to your target. It also has a smaller range. Very different from RTL.

DE of course.

(but both would be interesting)

Cygnus.6903:

The problem with PU condi is not that it isn’t supposed to be a thing, it’s that it’s the easiest spec to play in the game, yet quite possibly the hardest spec to fight against.

I really can’t believe people that are coming here trying to make a case about PU condi requiring ‘effort, timing and constant work to get the condis up and keep them up’. I mean, how deep can you fall into your own dreamworld? You can literally keep up high stacks of torment by auto attacking…

As a person who generally can’t play PvE longer then an hour because it’s so dull, I found playing this build to be worse (and easier).

Where does it say PU in the title of the thread?

Condi builds have many variations. PU is a single trait, I know it’s a shocking revelation but it is possible to play Condi Mesmer without PU.

Have you tried playing without PU? How about without Scepter? Or without Blinding Dissipation?

I play with none of those things (sword/torch, staff) and can assure you it requires effort, skill and guile. I cannot simply “auto attack” someone to death…

I would be ecstatic if they changed spatial surge to single hit and then reintroduced confusing combatants as they planned to do as well as leaving lost time alone.

tobascodagama.2961:

Curunen.8729:

I don’t like quickness with Blurred Frenzy. I don’t have a lot of use for quickness in my primary build besides stomps/resses. Therefore I don’t want it.

I’ve tested this, and the Blur effect lasts the full 2 1/2 seconds no matter how long the channel is. It’s really easy to check. Without Quickness, the channel and the Blur effect end at the same time. With Quickness, the channel will end but the Blur effect will keep going for like 1/2 s afterward. It’s super easy to check with Time Warp.

Thank you so much.

I haven’t been able to play properly for quite a few weeks and as I’ve never used Time Warp much or any other previous source of quickness I hadn’t tested this so assumed the worst.

That is the single best piece of news I’ve read in this forum all month – so apologies Silverkey if I came on too strongly. Your suggestions then seem to also work for me as I would certainly choose Illusionary Reversion over Cp (especially with iMage).

:) Wow that has really cheered me up.

I hope they do manage to get them in there tomorrow – I need to test a few things in order to prepare correct purchases on the tp in time in case of price changes.

Depending on if any changes have been made I’m still oscillating between two major build possibilities which require different consumables.

apharma.3741:

stealth on a slow class like Mesmer is a bad joke and generally most roamers can catch up the 3-4s gap easily.

Just as an interesting side note.

Using Traveler runes, traited blink, torch, decoy, mass invis, traited staff for reverse phase retreats and Mirror for reflects, I have been able to outrun fairly large groups (which also happen to contain warriors, rangers and thieves among others) – running in straight lines as well.

Add in a bit of misdirection/changing direction with the long stealth duration and not many can keep up unless they’re seriously intent on chasing you, especially once you get out of combat and at “normal” running speed.

Between blink, decoy, condi cleanse, portal, glamours, mirror images and even signets… I think it’s hard to justify mimic in its current state at all, just to use it for a very specific purpose that might only happen very rarely.

I love the Leystone top on asura – looks pretty cool.

Need to find a better location for screenshots though.

Actually I’m quite fond of being able to teleport to people up ledges and other things using ileap.

In fact once I had the clone summon delay post patch work in my favour on forest keep – I cast it on an enemy mesmer who blinked up to the raised level while I was mid cast – the delay in clone summon caused it to appear up top right on him which allowed me to follow immediately.

I would only be in favour of a “reverse leap” if we teleported forward without requiring a target like a reverse phase retreat, and could go up ledges and other things, and then had the option of swapping back. I’d even be ok with them removing the stunbreak and raising the cooldown if it was done properly.

Raf.1078:

I left for awhile. Nearly 6 months actually. Came back a few weeks ago and am having fun again. If you aren’t having fun, go play or do something else.

Same.

And I find it mostly fun too, especially the combat.

The only thing I don’t find fun is working towards all this ascended gear – stupid and unnecessary. I’m ignoring weapons and armour for the moment.

Hell no!

No ICD on Illusionary Reversion or Chronophantasma.

If they gut these two traits after gutting MtD, I will probably take a very extended vacation from the game. IR and Cp are the ONLY thing allowing me to accept the MtD nerf.

And I’d like to think I’m in the sensible camp that supports nerfs for PU and CS.

I will say one thing based on my limited testing time in hotjoins – MtD (the trait specifically) is not overpowered.

Other traits (cough, PU…) might be changes, but it is very easy for the torment stacks to be cleansed.

In fact one signet Mesmer was giving me an especially hard time with amazing survivability.

As a side note, the change to vulnerability is interesting for condition builds with staff AA. Same for sword AA and clones (together with bleeding/confusion on crit).

I speculate that Sword/Shield could see a lot of use in addition to torch. Maybe if Inspiration becomes interesting enough to take with Domination and Duelling, traited Focus could come back for Sword/Focus.

It’s going to be a tough choice between the 4 trait lines (Chaos/Inspiration/Illusions/Chrono) to add to Domination/Duelling for power shatter (I still believe DE will be necessary), so hopefully there will be a good variety of builds at all ends of the scale.

Explosion All illusions shatter where they stand and knockback any target within 240 radius of each illusion. Base zero damage, only physical ragdoll effect. Base CD = 60s.

Can synergise with interrupt traits such as halting strike.

Neptune.2570:

Curunen.8729:

Neptune.2570:

Yes. Asurans are better in PvP. Because jump dodges. And the way they hold there GS.

Oh, this, by far.

Asura greatsword mesmer and ranger animations > all. My biggest disappointment is not being able to use both ranger and mesmer greatsword at the same time.

Asuran ranger holding his GS with the swoop animation bug. Perfect

Haha!

But just imagining things like summon izerker → mirror blade → swap → swoop →hilt bash → maul + mind wrack…

drool…

0

I bought the Legend off the TP.

I bet that Caladbolg will be the new legendary greatsword and the precursor for it will require this broken piece as part of the collection, even if it is just a one handed sword now.

But we’ll just have to wait and see once they announce more legendaries.

For a moment I came in here and thought this was a real patch…

kitten , don’t scare me like that! :o

Another thing – Sum of all Fears…

This looks awful – anyone playing a condition build taking illusion line would very likely take Scepter, and therefore take the scepter trait. Only exception I can think of is something like GS+Staff or Sw/P/T+Staff MtD shatter – but even then scepter would be a better choice.

See I would feel way to susceptible to a counter condi bomb (particularly necros) if not currently running Inspiration.

Duelling/Chaos /Illusions is the most offensive for condi (especially if you slot mantra of distraction and run with Mistrust), but I don’t like how incredibly weak it is at dealing with incoming conditions.

Order change – YES (can be done as quests)
Class change – YES (gem store item or whatever)
Race change… that is the only bit of customisation I think should not be possible directly.

As an alternative, how about importing your level 80 character into a “new game plus” (second playthrough), like many singleplayer rpgs have now?

On import you keep:
- gear (will be unequipped)
- skillpoints gained (will all be refunded)
- level gained (and all trait points refunded)
- map exploration
- any currencies

You get to change:
- race
- class
- name
- looks

You should need to buy manuals to unlock trait tiers again, especially if changing class.

erm yeah, this is a huge buff – now it will be default.

Pepsi.8907:

It’s silly really, some of the complaints ARE justified and on those, I can,t see many mesmers disagreeing (PU shave, BD fix, CS shave, etc)
But sometimes it’s juste QQ for the sake of QQ without knowing a class… The revealed problem as been dealt with months ago, and many of those “invulns” stayed exactly the same as pre-patch, yet now it’s a problem.
Many don’t even know how the burst of a mesmer works, that it needs to go in melee for full potential.
Since when is blurred frenzy op either way… I saw it, QQ about blurred frenzy
Sword main-hand is the shadow of what it was, and people are still asking for nerf on something that hasn’t changed with the patch…
What will we see next? dodging shouldn’t produce clones because too OP?

Agreed.

It seems people are using the existence of a few Mesmer specific problems post-patch (the ones you mentioned – PU, BD, CS) as an excuse to unleash a huge amount of vitriol towards things that have already existed pre-patch and have already seen nerfs over the last few years (the Blurred Frenzy example really made me facepalm when I read it).

It is ridiculous.

I can only speak for myself and as a Mesmer main of course I don’t want the class to be mindless easymode nonsense where bad play can be rewarded. I don’t think most of us in here do. But some of the complaints I’ve read are just unbelievable – hating on the class for its basic function – ie to “be a nuisance” compared to an “honourable” class like guardian (nevermind they can teleport to you through walls and unload a disgusting amount of power and Condi burst – same can be said in different ways for all classes).

The damage problems are not Mesmer specific and need to be dealt with anyway – whether through shaving amulets and tweaking stats.

Untraited (ie NOT using PU) stealth is identical to pre patch and perfectly fine with plenty of counterplay (timing of defensive cooldowns, positioning, anticipation, aoe…).

Three Mesmer specific things “need” toning down – PU, CS and and BD (blinding dissipation of course, not bountiful disillusionment!)
Global damage numbers and stats need rebalancing to temper burst across all classes.

That’s it as far as Mesmer is concerned.

It boils down to the fact that the overall match result is only partly affected by your skill, whether you play above the average expectation with your class/build or not – but the match outcome is always fairly largely affected by factors beyond your control.

However, achieving higher than average success in varying situations within a match (some of which have been mentioned in here) is always affected and determined by your skill with your class/build.

While these situations mostly go unrecognised and unrewarded, they are by far the better measuring stick for self evaluation and measure of success/skill.

F3 and F4 are always useful in any build, I don’t know how you can play successfully without using these two.

But I agree that F1 and F2 are kind of useless in non-shatter condition builds.

F2 is a little useless in non-IP power builds unless taking something like shattered concentration and the other three shatters happen to be on cooldown in which case it is useful for boon strip.

Personally I see it as we don’t have to use all the shatters – they are just there so we’re given a choice. Otherwise pick and choose which ones you want to use based on the build/situation.

Merge Illusionary Ambush and Mirage Advance into a single skill.

Increase range on Jaunt to 600.

Add a contextual optional directional movement to dodge:
- hitting dodge button only just provides Mirage cloak and does not move you.
- pressing a directional key (forward /left/right/back) and dodge key together does a 200-300 range blink in the direction you move, and also gives Mirage cloak. This also applies to double tap for dodge.

This retains flexibility of the dodge – you still can blur without moving by hitting the dodge button only, but you also have the option of a directional dodge blink if moving while hitting dodge.

Noss.4105:

YOU! Yes, you who just scrolled down without reading. Don’t even think about posting before you’ve read the above.

But moan moan moan, groan groan groan, perma this perma that perma insta, insta perma, insta insta, burst condi cancer noob scrub invuln stealth over9000 clones reflect evade confusion torment ranged stun insta 100-0 PU blinds blocks daze aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!

lol, yeah but it’s fun to imagine facetanking in ridiculous scenarios with such a build. xD

Probably could try it with PU condi. antitoxin and sweet bean buns for some truly insane survivability…

The thing is I strongly believe you should not be able to take Blade Training AND Evasive Mirror together – it should be one or the other, either lower cooldown on BF, ileap, iRiposte and Swordsman, or have a reflect available on your BF (as well as dodging). That is why they should stay in the same tree.

Blinding Dissipation is also looking to be a very strong trait, and as such I think it should not be able to be paired with Evasive Mirror. So that’s why I prefer them all to stay mutually exclusive in the same tier.

Don’t forget offhand sword when it comes to synergy – having phantasmal fury on that can make a difference, so Blade Training is a solid trait affecting 5 skills, unlike the pistol trait.

As for Phantasmal Fury + Duelist’s Discipline -> I believe it should be a choice between " other phantasms crit more often proccing sharper images and confusing combatants" and “pistol phantasm (and magic bullet) delivers more conditions but with a lower crit rate”. I honestly think it’s good to have to choose between them.

I think:
1) Keep the precision bonus on sword but change the trait to grant reduced cooldown for every attack you evade or block (either from dodging or BF or iRiposte), and
2) Delete Desperate Decoy and replace it with a skill that inflicts bleeding when you interrupt a foe or something (specifically for any player not using a pistol).
3) Change Phantasmal Fury to pulse AoE Fury to allies (like regen does in Inspiration), or instead maybe summoning a phantasms gives you 5s of fury.

If Phantasmal Fury can be moved, then I think it is best to swap with one of the minor traits in duelling (though I don’t know which one), so then you can take it with the pistol.

Time Marches On – You move 25% faster. The duration of incoming movement-impairing conditions is reduced by 25%. (Cripple. Chilled, Immobilize)

:o

…

That’s a huge incentive to pick the trait line.

Good question, I don’t know anymore.

At least we’ve always got butterflies to amuse ourselves with.

Demonoid.1974:

Why are you comparing portal to search and rescue? What next? You gonna compare plague signet to blink? Mesmer has illusion of life, compare that to rez utilities. https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Illusion_of_Life vs. https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Search_and_Rescue

I second the nerf though. Ranger already has amazing utilities on top of beastly pets finally, it doesn’t need the best rez in the game too (short cd 1200 range teleport pet help rez). Nerf it, rework it, develop things properly. Since when are pets wizards…?

Yeah, this.

I don’t see the comparison with Portal. Illusion of Life makes more sense being a res skill and it has a ridiculously long cool down.

Carighan.6758:

Menzies The Heretic.3415:

Did you dodge any skill?

That applies equally to MtD application, so that’s not a sensible argument in the comparison.
Even though, ofc, class-to-class comparisons are bogus to begin with.

Yep.

“Oh no, MtD is overpowered!” – nevermind the dozens of ways of avoiding shatter bursts (dodging, evading, blocking, invuln) that every class has plenty of access to, and nevermind condition cleanse totally negating the damage – again that anyone sensible will always take with them.

Yes I am going to harp on about this nonsensical nerf to MtD in every thread until it is reverted. If that takes 6 months for Anet to realise how ridiculous this nerf was, then I’ll just keep going on about it.

minion.1987:

wintersday. defense was neat but too long a wait time in between waves, snowball fights slingshot, bells never did them presents were boring. wintersday boring.

Bah humbug.

No thanks – only the interaction with Mass invis could use a tweak.

Traited Mirror heal and mirror on Blink are the primary reasons I enjoy Chaos. Take that away and the only other thing I enjoy in that line is the Stability from Bountiful Disillusionment.