Guild Wars 2

Ehecatl.9172:

Curunen.8729:

My belief is ranged combat is impossible to balance in this game because of one thing – tab targeting => no skill needed to aim ranged attacks.

Yes I know it’s not a shooter but here lies the problem. Then we either have:
- ranged skills too weak as in the past with combat strongly favouring melee
- ranged skills too strong with no skill required compared to melee

Ranged combat DOES require skill. It’s incredibly biased to say otherwise.

A ranged damage dealer has to be capable of keeping away from the enemy, which requires well timed snares, knock downs, immobilizes, etc to limit the enemy’s advance while simultaneously desperately avoiding any of the opponent’s control effects and trying to continuously run away without turning your back on the enemy so you can keep doing damage.

Melee counters this strategy with gap closing skills to get in close and utilize their own slows and control effects trying to keep the ranged fighter in melee range.

It’s called kiting. It’s in just about every RPG ever invented, and it’s the single most important skill a ranged fighter can have.

No skill compared to melee if both deal comparable damage, not no skill at all.
The melee user is under pressure to close the gap – the ranged user has to kite and pew pew reactively to maintain the gap. Personally I think the latter is much easier to do.

Anyway as I said, the problem is tab targeting – if this game had a crosshair and proper aiming mechanics for ranged weapons, it would be easier to balance.

But I am very biased against this game’s archaic targeting – maybe because I come from a background of fps/tps and action rpgs, all of which require manual aiming with weapons and skills. Maybe in GW3 they can finally do away with it instead of a half-kittened attempt at making it an “action” game with dodge mechanics and casting while moving.

I want my invuln mantra.

Well, squishier in that there are no damage mitigation traits – for example like the protection and regen you get in Chaos.

Every chrono trait is geared offensively (edit: apart from the 25% reduction on cripple/chill/immobilise from the movement speed minor), generally frequent shattering is encouraged (for alacrity), although you can pair it with lines like Inspiration and Chaos if you want to go for something tanky.

But if you learn to use CSplit effectively, you can get a lot out of it.

Vash.1920:

<snip>

BTW: the haters: it´s a sign for good work – and as long they are so obviously stupid the whole community knows “he just hates without reason”. Not all PvP player are bad or social fools, lot of nice people out there. But also lot people who should realy try to get better they are way not as good as they believe and in combination with their beaviour just embarrassing. “good” is btw no total word. The most player with fame always think they have did it – they are the best – actually the people who never think they are the best are those with the highest chance to really become the best and also the people who don´t have to prove something in stupid duels in a game which is absolutely not made for 1on1 comparisons.
If there is one thing i ´ve learned in 10 years of pvp games than, that u will never be the best – alyways someone better out there and even u are this person u will someday find someone who maybe never did any tournements or special things who will beat you without really know who u are. IN my view some of the best players in GW2 are hided in the shadows yet. I see them sometimes in WvW or in hotjoins givin me the hell of a fight. So i really don´t know why people say hotjoin is for losers. I miss the old times with IDL when PvP goes hand in hand with more respect and more good gameplay than now. Some player in the top 100 are just there because lot of people have leaved the game i don´t know why they act like Heros now.

I just had to stick my head back in this forum to say – quoted for truth, well said.

On this note I think I’m going to continue to hold off on HoT until after it has been released – wait and see how many of the good theoretical changes get nerfed into uselessness before we get to play them.

I know this won’t happen, but I’d love to have a small pool of water (jumping out the gates into water was my favourite part of the old map)?

I’m interested to see what the GS ambush looks like – it may be quite fun, who knows.

Power shatter could work with domination, illusions (for recharge on shatters and illusion skills mainly) and chronomancy with both clone and phantasm traits.

Trouble is, duelling is still looking to be a solid line for any build – you’ve got vigor on crit, bleeding/confusion on crit and mistrust for any condition build, DE and blinding dissipation for any shatter build, pistol trait for any interrupt build, harmonious mantras for pve builds… going to have to wait and see exact details for chronomancy traits, otherwise I’d still imagine many/most builds will still take duelling for different reasons.

Yeah I’d also go Dom/Insp/Chrono with Sword/Shield + Scepter/Focus.

The biggest problem right now is the choice between Restorative Illusions and Warden’s Feedback.

If Warden’s Feedback was say swapped with Restorative Mantras in adept so we could also trait it with RI I would happily take the Focus no problem. But the untraited projectile destruction is bugged (projectiles can still hit you) and RI is simply a much better trait for survival. It’s sad but RI is so amazing that any mesmer build going into Inspiration benefits from it. I’d only take Warden’s Feedback in PvE now, if I played that, but in PvP it can’t compete with the condi removal on shatter.

Anyway I have been playing this: EDIT wrong link!
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhAQNAW8OnknBlph1fCUrhlTj68IiirjMAWggqOar2tF-TJxHABXXG4k9HE7iAAwTAAA

Similar build with Staff + Sword/Shield because staff is simply better in PvP.

The Slow on Interrupt and Danger Time are the best choices here I find, and allows you to do solid sustained direct damage thanks to the many crits without needing to perform high spike bursts. Chronophantasma is of course the superior grandmaster and synergises best with Mental Defence.

Confounding Suggestions is better when taking staff becase of the extra source of Daze. Empowered Illusions would be better with Focus because fewer sources of Daze unless taking Mantra of Distraction.

Well of Precognition is the dogs kittens (lol weird censor) – so so amazing to use. Third utility slot is a toss up. I like Decoy for another stunbreak but Portal or anything else is an option.

Time Warp is totally superior to Gravity Well. My biggest beef with Gravity Well is that it does not play well with interrupts, because the only possible chance to interrupt is on the initial knockdown – once floated an enemy won’t be interrupted for the final Pull. So I don’t like it unfortunately.

I sometimes trait Medic’s Feedback because it’s a useful trait in teamfights.

Cynz.9437:

denis.9487:

So if rylock is jumping of the bridge the rest of you lemmings can follow.

i am sure you would if it was Helseth~

As far as I’m concerned the entire mesmer playerbase can reroll and it won’t stop me from playing it – because mesmer is the only reason I play gw2.

I personally don’t see the distinction between these build anymore.

If you’ve got high power and crit (running glassy), then you may as well use mind wracks as well as phantasms and weapon skills to add up the damage. There’s no sense in ignoring other damage sources.

Then it’s just the varying level of “control” the build has – from minimal control (ie, sword/torch, no control traits) to full control (MoD, GS, Pistol/Focus, Staff, and assosciated traits).

glenndevis.8327:

Honestly I don’t think they really tried to “dps” during that stream. It looked more like showing off skills & things they could do.
The weapons they used weren’t the best, didn’t have 3 clones up most of the time, the traits they used didn’t seem great either…

That being said, I do think that other classes look a bit crazy so far. Deadeye doing a 11k hit with rifle #4, Firebrand doing insane burning, Scourge having very wide spread damage.

Either way I don’t think Mirage will be a good DPS spec other than “maybe” single target encounters. And now maybe encounters that require target swapping.

Got a question though, does Elusive Mind trigger from getting Mirage Cloak from utility skills?
Edit: I’m assuming it doesn’t. Would make Deceptive Evasion even more op on Mirage. Also it specifies “dodging.”

As it says dodge, I’m imagining Elusive Mind is dodge only, not other evades or mirage cloaks.

Would be ridiculously OP if it was any evade, and in any case I’m not looking forward to almost certain nerfs it will receive. I hope they go gently and just put an icd on the stunbreak or something if it gets out of hand…

inb4 mantra of recovery cooldown nerf – you can essentially spam the heal continuously with a few seconds in between each activation – nevermind the restorative mantras trait…

Only downside is RSI on your heal finger. :p

Yeah has been suggested many times before and yes I’m still in favour of it.

PvE Tyria has some beautiful maps, far more interesting to play in than the limits pvp arenas and monotonous wvw alpine/desert borderlands and ebg (not going to mention eotm because most players actively avoid fights there unless it’s going for an objective..).

Trouble is despite the beautiful zones in Tyria, the gameplay is soooo boring because enemy mobs are so dumb and predictable. Not only this but stomping as a mechanic also adds a lot of flavour to combat, and sadly the only pve enemies that had this were those elite toxic alliance folks – which can still be found in areas like south of Kessex Hills.

If pve mobs were somewhat unpredictable and veterans/elites had downed state, it would be more fun to play rather than smacking your face against bullet sponges with millions of hp trying to do as much “dps” as possible…

I mean even if they just copy pasted some core tyria zones into wvw/the mists as a “free for all” skirmish only map, it would be fun to play (could still have pve dynamic events running but almost like an alternate reality of the map in the mists so everything is weird with players fighting each other). That would be awesome.

Armour skin cloner.

Works on any armour, creating a duplicate skin able to be applied over a piece with different stats – however the skin is account bound so you can’t sell.
I’d like to have the same armour look with several different stat sets, and with order armour from a different character, that can be a pain.

I don’t think this should be extendable to weapons but if it is then perhaps a restriction in not working on legendaries or anything acquired from the mystic forge?

The only thing necessary is for #2 to teleport you away from your target, like phase retreat – not closer to danger as it does most of the time…

Fhaeris.9237:

Curunen.8729:

I kind of wish 3 casts was baseline.

Then Harmonious Mantras could instead automatically restore 1 charge every so many seconds (can make it different for each mantra – 20s per charge restored for MoRecovery, 40s for MoDistraction, 30s for MoResolve, 35s for MoC).

That would incentive passive play, and it’s not a good thing.

Not really because you’d be missing out on the restorative mantras and protected mantras bonuses if not using them up and recharging manually.

I dunno, perhaps another option is Harmonious mantras could reduce the cast time of charging to under 1 second?

(For the record I still wouldn’t use the trait – just wondering ways of making a useful trait and have 3 charges standard, instead of adding an extra charge on the trait).

A giant badge of honour on the back?

But yeah I agree a wvw legendary backpiece would be nice.

I think they hate having to work to acquire a target, and also hate the “ai spam”.

Compare that to a more “honourable” class like a warrior or guardian.

(I don’t share this opinion by the way)

Zarathustra.1458:

I will be honest, I do kinda like the sword ambush skill, but it feels like it should have been part of the base sword kit from the beginning… The other thing that gets me, it feels like we are not getting enough endurance. We ultimately seem to now have a second resource to manage for our damage, and like our clones it is again tied to our defenses. This is kinda insane… Would probably feel much better with a third dodge…

I agree, even with vigour the endurance regen is too slow to be practical for either offence or defence.

Oh, now the beta’s finished.

Sad not to be able to play chrono for another month.

Niminion.1982:

There is no condi mesmer without MtD being a strong trait. There is no point in scepter or staff without condi build.

Landing shatters is not faceroll damage like how other classes click a button and numbers fly. Clones take time to create. Clones do not live long in group pvp, clones have a few seconds to run to their target before they fail. Shatter can be dodged easily as you see clones running at you. Shatter kills your passive damage from phantasms and clones. The new IP baseline adds MtD damage but puts the mesmer in melee range.

I seriously don’t know what to do with my mesmer anymore, if I wanted to play a melee power class I would not be playing mesmer. Please don’t me me play engineer or ranger…

Agreed.

I’m actually tempted to reroll melee ranger because it’s a lot more fun than what we have at the moment.

FI should just be swapped down to adept tier with CS brought up to master tier. Would solve several problems in one go.

The problem with EM is it is an offensive trait – it doesn’t help much in defence seeing as you would have evaded the attack anyway, the reflect is just a nice little bonus – and also it competes with Blinding Dissipation which is a superior string on the defensive bow for any build.

Bountiful Disillusionment is a fantastic trait – I vastly prefer it to both PU and CI.

TE is situational – good with Medic’s Feedback, Null Field and Time Warp if playing support.

Hehe, some funny posts.

I also believe that mostly mesmer players truly enjoy fighting against other mesmers – based on the assumption that if you enjoy playing a class because of its theme you also enjoy fighting against the same class as an enemy.

Of course that doesn’t mean other class players don’t enjoy fighting mesmers – for example even pre patch my favourite match up was playing power shatter vs thieves, because it was extremely enjoyable even if we were at a disadvantage.

Some other mains who barely or never play mesmer by extension most likely do not enjoy fighting against mesmers – hence the endless complaints.

Add to that the fact that mesmers are designed to be annoying, manipulative, and punishing enemy mistakes makes for the worst case of profession hatred in the game.

Then you could add other assumptions like a player doesn’t like their “badas(s) warrior” to lose to a “pink butterfly/fairy” out of irrational hatred.

Axe does have cleave whereas Scepter is single target apart from Confusing Images.

Also with scepter bolts all being projectiles, I’m wondering if Evasive Mirror and a simple dodge will counter scepter ambush really hard.

It also seems to have an annoying side effect:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/pvp/illusionary-leap-swap-bugged

Not happy about this – I agree just delete ileap and make a new skill.

That new grieving stat looks insane – may be better than viper.

I’d wait tbh.

Veruah.5302:

Oh oh oh!

But if it hits the Mesmer is increases chances of iLeap and Blink actually working!

All hail the new Sw/T meta!

That’s it! RNG buff on allies that makes broken skills work and a debuff on enemies that makes working skills break! xD

Carpboy.7145:

So basically you want WvW?

With better scenery – like the Brand for example.

Brutaly.6257:

will elites be available??

Pretty please?

Advent.6193:

Psssh. Here goes the slippery slope again. Portal = nerfed. TW (and Quickness, period) = nerfed. Now, it’s Confusion. And, of course, once that gets well and truly boned, then what? “Oh, I don’t like that Staff bounce, it gives me burn/bleed/vuln stacks! Nerf, plz.”

Goodness, you’d think folk don’t realize that Confusion is one of the major Mesmer
Conditions, or something. Do Mesmer players cry about all the Poison and Bleed
Necros stack? Here’s the only “fix” Confusion needs: keep it from triggering on Trait-Dodges/(non-attacking) Attunement Swaps. Past that, if you can’t disable your autoattacks, that’s not a Mesmer’s (or Confusion Engi’s) fault.

Agreed.

Bleed, poison and burning is just as powerful as confusion, and punish you directly with damage compared to you punishing yourself by not paying attention.

And if people still moan about it, give it an obvious visual effect around the edge of the screen – purple blur or something, so there’s no way a player will be confused as to whether they’re confused! :p

Heh, funnily enough I just decided to go back and read through the thread – in hindsight the whole thing looks rather peaceful and polite! ^^

Anyway, can we make the most of enjoying the rest of this excellent patch. I don’t want this sour note to cause a rift in our forum when we’re all here to enjoy the same class.

It’s a bit sad if not because given some of the kitten poor cast effects (eg iWarlock) what is the point of using certain phantasm skills aside from extra shatter fodder, especially if using DE and having no trouble generating enough clones?

No, I can’t say playing condi shatter feels like crushing.

Feels more like a gentle massage to the enemy’s health bar.

I think Mistrust should be merged with Duelist’s Discipline and then made as a Grandmaster major.

That leaves room for Confusing Combatants to return maybe as an Adept major, and then Desperate Decoy can be deleted in favour of something better.

I hope it was intended because I’m loving MoResolve right now.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Chaos armor? Sounds good. I always wanted to be a Beacon in the Dark. :P

I’ll need a mini Skritt that follows me around, staring at me saying “Ooohh. SHINY!” To make the look complete though.

Even better – I want to play as a glowing skritt, who is so shiny that all other shinies look not so shiny.

Greatsword – auto attack – go afk and make yourself a cup of tea.

(throw some izerkers and mind wracks in there if you can be bothered)

I agree. It encourages players to sit in stealth for ages to get the same recharge back – and seems to be directly tied in with PU – as if no other build will be using the torch…

I would like to see this modified before next week, even just stick the flat 20% recharge back on with condition removal. It doesn’t need to be changed.

I only have one problem with the GoB reward track – it encourages “grinding” wvw.

What I mean is normally I don’t care for the reward point ticks or participation – which allows for more sensible gameplay and a focus on fighting, attacking/defending an objective, and so on…

However now I am in the process of making gifts for a legendary and am halfway through the GoB track I find it changes the way I play wvw – for the short time of 8-10 hours I do this I am solely focused on participation and reward point ticks – often disregarding objectives, enemy players and so on entirely. Once I have my participation up I am simply tagging sentries to keep it up and waypointing to a safe zone to afk for 10 minutes.

This is stupid gameplay. I am not enjoying wvw for this short period of getting the GoB and am most likely not helping my server in the process while filling a player slot.

For the record this is from the perspective of someone who loves pvp and wvw, fighting other players, and finds pve combat a boring chore.

The trouble is Legendary gear is a grind from start to finish – which fits with a grindy game mode in pve where the rewards are so much greater than the enjoyment of gameplay. But wvw should be about enjoyment of gameplay, not grind so while I agree pve exclusive players should have to venture into other game modes to deserve a legendary, I don’t think Anet have it right with the current system.

Scepter/Focus + Sword/Shield and this might be a lot of fun – certainly have a stupid amount of projectile mitigation through weapons, utilities and traits (if you take evasive mirror over blinding dissipation – but obviously not sure how useful each will be yet).

And yes – the main concern as you’ve highlighted is damage output – not sure how it will work in this case – whether the shatters would be hard hitting enough (even if you go full zerker), or if the conditions would be damaging enough (given sword, focus and shield are not natural condition weapons and would be relying heavily on sharper images and confusing combatants).

But for control/support in small groups, it could be quite potent.

Generosity is not so good because it is not controllable – you don’t know when it will proc or what it will remove. Could be 10 stacks of bleed, could be 1 stack of vuln.

Ineptitude only loses some value since the removal of blind on chaos armour so the only effective way now is to take it with Blinding Dissipation otherwise there is a shortage of blinds.

Sebrent.3625:

Well, until someone shows me some concrete proof, I’m not going to freak out.

Now 30 is approaching so my eyes could be going, but I just double-checked this whole thread and don’t see one link, screenshot, etc..

How about we get actual proof or just wait until tomorrow before we pull out the torches and pitchforks?

I’m going to say it right now … if, when we log in after tomorrow, MtD still applies 2 stacks of torment, you’re going to feel silly at best.

No I will feel good, happy and relieved.

Best time to get loud is right now seeing as they explicitly mentioned it in the stream – which is enough proof that they’re thinking about it.

I will feel 100x more silly if I don’t say anything and they go ahead with the nerf. So my pitchfork is dusted off.

Pretty standard post-patch condition build using Scepter/x and whatever off set.

Pretty much every single condition mesmer post-patch is running something similar with one or two minor trait/gear alterations.

I don’t mean to be dismissive but when you’re coming out with comments like “For example, everyone picks Blinding Dissipation, but compared to how much it shines in my build, it seems almost random everywhere else.” I find that pretty condescending to many players – the only “different” thing about this build is using generosity sigils instead of energy sigils.

Ascalonian pants are a plain set, and both Student and Country pants are also better than the majority of long dresses/robes.

But I agree it would be nice to see more simple leggins for light armour instead of all the dresses (kind of like medium armour trench coat syndrome…).

Ross Biddle.2367:

I find it pretty easy to replace 60404 with something like DODUCH
DO – CS, FI, PB
DU – PF, EM, HM
CH – MM, CT, CI

I already know the trait names thus their corresponding initials. And like this it represents the layout we already interface with (Trait line name, trait picks left to right).

If you were in a hurry you could just list the 3 GM traits. People could put together the rest based on best synergy.

DODUCH – PB, HM, CI

Sounds like a swear word tbh. :p

I wonder what the funniest/strangest trait name combo based off the first two letters from any class could be? Ah, now I have to find out.

But yeah on a serious note I suppose that isn’t too much trouble.

AoE retaliation pulsing to nearby allies?

Torment/confusion on bounce?

Burning on bounce?

Lower CD?

Embolism.8106:

GREATSWORD
Mirror Blade – I feel that making Illusionary Elasticity baseline for this skill (which I don’t think any Power Mesmer took before the patch anyway) allowing you to hit a single target up to 3 times is too much. I’d reduce the number of bounces from 4 to 3.

I have to agree with FJSAMA regarding this.

Even if using Sword/Torch + GS pre patch, I still took iElasticity for mirror blade F1 bursts, and so did many other players – and if people were using Staff + GS then of course everyone took it.

So no, I don’t think Mirror Blade should be hurt in such a way.

Instead I think it should definitely be blockable AND reflectable as any normal projectile.

Thinking along those lines, I would have loved elite skills similar to Harmony and Mayhem from Skyrim.

So a ground target AoE that either:
- causes all enemies to see their allies as enemies (all bars turn red and can be damaged)
- causes all enemies to see everyone as allies (all bars turn green and can’t be damaged)

The shield block change is the single best thing I’ve read regarding Chrono over all the beta weekends.

Very excited for shield now.