Guild Wars 2

Blaine Tog.8304:

If you like to play Ele support by camping in Water and tossing out heals, then yeah, the Druid is going to do your job better than you.

If you play Ele support by making full use of everything available to us, though, you should be just fine.

You imply that it’s not okay to camp in one kind of attunement 80% of the time, but glass staff eles do exactly that.

NoTrigger.8396:

if bosses dont have enrage timer, berserker players will kill stuff faster, but berserker wont be a requirement.
players who use other gear will need longer to kill stuff, but will have an easier time to survive. so isnt that a good trade off?

As i said, if you have your survival-per-second rating better by even 50%, but the encounter takes 3-4x longer, then your survival chances actually go down. And, as i’ve also said, this is conservative estimate, it’s actually much worse.

As the game is now, you sacrifice dps, but in exchange you don’t really get “better chances to survive”. All you get is more chances to make a mistake. I wouldn’t call it a good trade off.

Reward Tiers

Proposal Overview
Different reward tiers with different requirements per Raid. Each tier is increasingly hard to complete.

Goal of Proposal
To create multiple difficultly levels without changing a raid

Proposal Functionality
Basically each Raid would have a base reward, which is rewarded regardless of how well you do however each Raid would also have “bonus” loot based how well you do. These would be separated into 4 tiers, Bronze, Siliver, Gold and Platinum. These requirements for how well you do could vary Raid to Raid, it could be how quickly you complete the Raid, how well you complete bonus objectives or how soundly you beat the various Bosses. As an example here’s what they could be for various Raids:

Battle of LA/ Battle on the Breachmaker:
Mechanism: Time based
Bronze: Whatever time
Silver: If you wipe 1 or 2 times you still may get this tier if your quick
Gold: Your not likely to get this tier if you wipe even once
Platinum: No wipes, you must have an optimized group and go through the entire Raid almost perfectly, melting bosses and going from step to step as fast as you can.

The Marionette:
Mechanism: The Aetherblade Cannon chrage
Bronze: You didn’t fail
Silver: 50% or less of a charge
Gold: No Marionette chain break attempts failed or equilvient amount of champs got through
Platinum: No champs got through, no chain attempts failed. 0% Charge

Tower of Nightmares:
Mechanism: There are people trapped in the tower you need to rescue, they die after a period of time.
Bronze: We had to save people?
Silver: 25% saved
Gold: 75% saved
Platinum: Nobody left behind.

As you can see Platinum requirements would be tuned to be absolutely insane, something so that “world’s first” would be something worth bragging about. This could have an additional one-time reward tied to it which could include an achievement with a title and good reward like an ascended item or something similar in value (something you could add to your ascended armor to add a new selectable stat would be nice). This would mean each base Raid would be completable but there would be something insane to go for the most hardcore amongst us.

Associated Risks
-Rage if a certain base reward tier isn’t met
-A time based requirement could strengthen the berserker meta more
-Harder class requirements for Platinum rewards
-Veterans could be less accepting of newbies for fear of losing out a reward tier.

I’m basing this on the fact that in TTS I’ve noticed over time there are the glory hunters who joined us for the Triple Trouble first kill but played less once we achieved the first kill, the farmers who just want their loot, and the explorers who just want to experience everything the game has to offer. I noticed in the beginning the glory hunters joined us for the glory of getting the first kill then over time they got their kill and moved on then the farmers who wanted the Wurm’s unique loot settled in once our strategies settled down and they’re still with us almost every day. The explorers come and go every once and a while and join in for a couple kills then move on.

Platinum is for the glory hunters, that’s why the main reward is one-time, once you get the epic achievement, to them repeatable rewards are kinda meh. Bronze through Gold is more for the farmers, multiple tiers will keep them entertained and keep the Raid tense even after the 100 times. The reason I didn’t want too many more repeatable rewards at Platinum is so there’s less conflict between explorers who won’t be knowledgable about the fight and Farmers who just want the best reward.

Keep in mind all 3 of these types of players (and any I missed) will all be in the same Raid together, their needs affect each other.

I once decided not to rez a teammate in wvw because they were an Asura.

I regret nothing!

Kasima.8143:

Bhima.9518:

If you make it too hard and too time consuming, your raiding end game could fall into the Wildstar trap of being way too frustrating for all but the elite raiding masochists. We all know how Wildstar is doing in terms of retention regardless of how many of the hardcore raiders in this thread want to move GW2 towards.

This whole argument is a false dilemma. Adding hardcore raiding wouldn’t somehow diminish the quality or the value of the rest of the game as you imply it would. I don’t do Arah because I find it too hardcore. Yet, I’m still playing GW2.

People aren’t going to rage quit the game if Anet decides to ADD content that caters to its hardcore gamers. The non-hardcore content isn’t going to just disappear.

That depends on how much emphasis is placed on the raids. If they become the focus of the endgame content, lore and rewards then that is heading down the path of Wildstar.

If raids are truly optional and ALL raid rewards (aside from cosmetic items) are available through other means, then that may not be an issue.

To get more mileage out of raiding art assets and content, perhaps there could be Story Mode versions offered where players could a toned down version of the raid without getting the same rewards of course. Even solo versions could be possible which would allow all types of players to see the art assets and content rather than hiding it away in instances.

Basically I am talking about a difficulty scale with the players in control of how hard is the content (and thus what kind of rewards/achievements they get) You know, the kind of thing that they have been doing for decades in single player games, yet never sees implementation in MMOs even when there scaling systems in place.

THAT is the kind of thing that will keep casual players engaged. Not focusing on producing content for a tiny fraction of the playerbase which other players know they will never see.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

A few have asked what we should start with. To re-iterate we should start by discussing what raiding could be in GW2 with the foundation based on the core pillars of our game.

So think about accessibility, how our combat works, how our progression works, and so on.

Thanks,

Chris

One of the core pillars: the end-game starts at lv.1. I’m against any entry-barriers for raids. Getting there in a natural way would be as lv.80 content to me, as soon as someone leaves the “tutorial” (imho 1-80). Why would you lock out a good player who started playing GW2 yesterday? Why would the “dungeon-master” achievement be any indication of being a good player?

GW2’s combat shines with combos. Everyone can spam skills, but combos require a minimal amount of knowledge. Having too big groups trivializes combo-fields since random activations happen often. This is why all of my suggestions were about having small groups of 5 players playing (in different ways) next to each other. (I suggested non-intersecting paths, buffs for limiting damage and ghosts for limiting effect-clutter and visibility of combos). I don’t think we should have 15 people in the same area at the same time since zerging becomes mindless quite fast.

If combos would play an important role in enemy-encounters other than having small supportive benefits, this would make combat more interesting imho.

I am strongly opposed to the raids being only activated through means that only a guild could have. It should not only be accessible with any kind of guild currency. The raids should be able to be put together through chat or LFG tool if wanted. The overall difficulty will likely be too difficult to complete, but some of it would be possible.

hybrid.5027:

Accessibility Raid instances will be activated through the current Guild Mission system. When someone with mission control activates the raid portal in the open world, the first players in the guild to interact with the portal are transported to the raid instance. Activating a Guild Raid should cost some amount of Guild Merits, but not an excessive amount. Players should be encouraged to make multiple attempts per week, but discouraged from making hundreds of bad attempts. 1 to 5 Merits to activate seems like a compromise.

There will be no waypoints, and no ability to resurrect in case of a full party wipe. If you wipe players will be returned to the open world. Players can hard res each other as normal in cases of a partial wipe.

I think it would be a mistake to implement this sort of system in terms of accessibility. There is already to much incentive in the game the join a single large guild and basically ignore the rest of the community as well as for large guild to try and hoard their members as much as possible (as seen in the rise of 100% mandatory rep). While there should be some sort of entrance barrier to keep those obviously not prepared for out of it, I think i should play off of already similar content in the way of explorable dungeons. My suggestion, you have to complete all the dungeon paths in order to enter any raid, additionally every piece of gear you have equipped must be exotic when you enter (once your inside you can switch as you please but that’s your prerogative at that point)

Second NO entry fee. This discourages inexperienced players from entering and punishes those trying to learn a new system. While I do agree there should not be multitudes of waypoints a simple rez checkpoint systems (like fractals) is enough “punishment” for failing. Being put into the open world is too much for the majority of players and while it may be compelling to you as a the leader of DnT it will deter more players than welcome.

A nice medium for accessibility and difficulty would be to have the usual raid setup for those who want to participate but for those seeking a bit more of a challenge they can optionally sacrifice some kind of resource (gold, rare mats, tokens, really anything) as a sort of wager that they will succeed. If they go through the raid without wiping then they not only get what they paid in back but an exponential amount more as they continue without dying. This will also be a good way to incentivise players to return to the content once it is on “farm” as a way to gain more wealth/resources.

Rewards: Once a raid size has been established this is the most important thing to consider. Rewards can and will determine who will actually attempt the content as well as how long they are willing to repeat it. One of the biggest current complaints of fractals is the lack of rewards for the time and difficulty they present. Raids by their very nature should be more challenging than even this content and I think it is very important that the rewards they actually give (not only OFFER) is reflective of their investment. The highest quality equipment should be the baseline at this level of play (currently and hopefully forevermore ascended). GW2 however is about more than just what numbers are on your equipment (thankfully) so unique visual rewards in the way of weapons, armor, and outfits would be a compelling way to get players to run the content. In order to give this content a healthy lifespan however these kinds rewards cannot simply be given away all at once. Implementing a system similar to the existing dungeon tokens would be my suggestion for these particular rewards, a good short term goal. As for long term introducing gold, rare materials, and a long term synthesis track (more on this in a second) will give players incentive to run the content repeatedly.

Synthesis Track: As I mentioned in the last bit a good long term goal for raiding would be a Synthesis Track. A hybrid system of the current PvP track reward system and the Mystic Forge, this system will give raiders a long term goal that can evolve as the game does. Using materials that can be obtained from all aspects of the game the player will be able to spend “Raid Experience” to synthesize these materials into new items giving access to difficult to obtain items that span the entire game (i.e precursors, exotic/ascended runes, ascended armor/weapons)

Lastly (at least for now) the most crucial thing for raiding to become a health part of GW2. I believe that the raids MUST be instanced for the groups entering them. Large open world content is difficult to coordinate and is subject the outside influence that most raiders quite simply do not want to put up with.

I’ve probably already run out of space so I’ll throw this out there and start talking about boss design (which Anet is already very good at as shown by recent living story updates) if it comes up in the discussion later.

Hello everyone, I’m Evee from Relics of Orr (both the guild and the podcast). In the past I’ve been quite vocal about my support for bringing raids into GW2 and I’d like to share my ideas here as to how this could be achieved. Please note that this is a bit of a long post so a lot of people are posting while I type this so if I’m cutting in between a reply I’m sorry but such is the nature of the beast with a forum thread like this.

I should probably also mention that I do come from a long history of raiding in other games (including WoW) and think it’s important that people know that so they have some insight into my particular perspective as a former World First raider in several AAA MMO’s

Proposal Overview

To not only introduce raiding as a fun system for the majority of players to enjoy but implement it in such a way that it is healthy during the entire lifetime of GW2

Goal of Proposal

To fill the current lack of challenging but fun content for large groups of friends that is consistently rewarding.

Proposal Functionality

Raiding has been a long standing tradition in MMO’s for quite some time. That I can remember; all the way back to Everquest in fact; before the move forward to instances that was popularized by WoW.

Guild Wars already has in place a system reminiscent of EQ with it’s world bosses. However, most players nowadays look for more of a WoW-esque platform when they think of raiding. So in the in an effort to be as direct as possible I’ll now go into the features and implementation of raiding I think should exist in GW2 in order to set it apart from an old, well-known system that I think GW2 should take some lessons/influence from but should in no way try to reproduce (as so many others have tried)

Size: Finding the right size for a raid is the most crucial part when looking at designing. It determines the amount of logistics needed by the players as well as what kind of commitment and audience will actually go into the new content. To small of a number and many won’t consider it a “real raid” too many and participation becomes too much of a scheduling nightmare among large groups of people. Additionally having a set size is important in how the raids are designed for balance purposes; making an engaging boss fight for 10 people is very different than making one for 40. With that said I think a happy medium of size and convenience would be a raid size of 15 people. Large enough to have multiples of multiple professions while also being small enough to not deter the more casual players which are numerous in GW2 (which I would like to emphasize to everyone should be given every opportunity to be able to enjoy this content)

(continued in my next post)

Hi, I am Nike, the leader of Death and Taxes [DnT]. Our guild has an 11 year history of being at the forefront of MMO raiding and end game content. Our GW2 branch is well known for producing quality PVE guides and setting dungeon speed run records. In my humble opinion, I feel that I have a good idea of what the dungeon/fractal community in GW2 wants when it comes to raiding, challenging content and worthy rewards.

Proposal Overview

A suggested implementation of instanced raiding within guild wars 2.

Goal of Proposal

To implement instanced raiding which provides a sense of progression and achievement without compromising the unique attributes that make combat in Guild Wars 2 different than standard MMO genre games.

Proposal Functionality

This will be long-ish. Pack a lunch.

Accessibility Raid instances will be activated through the current Guild Mission system. When someone with mission control activates the raid portal in the open world, the first players in the guild to interact with the portal are transported to the raid instance. Activating a Guild Raid should cost some amount of Guild Merits, but not an excessive amount. Players should be encouraged to make multiple attempts per week, but discouraged from making hundreds of bad attempts. 1 to 5 Merits to activate seems like a compromise.

Size Raids will have a fixed player scale of 8-15. Any smaller than 8 is hardly worth of being called a raid, any larger than 16 some of the nuance of the unique combat system is lost due to particle effects and decreased mechanical complexity.

There will be no waypoints, and no ability to resurrect in case of a full party wipe. If you wipe players will be returned to the open world. Players can hard res each other as normal in cases of a partial wipe.

Raid Description Raid instances will be large zones, similar in size to an entire explorable dungeon or one of the main cities (Lions Arch, Divinity’s Reach etc). Players will spawn in a central area and can move outward in any desired direction, as the instances will be open ended. There will be 6 sub-quests throughout the instances in different areas of the zone and can be done in any order. Each quest will have unique goals and challenging sub-bosses. As an example of the suggested difficulty, I would cite Lupicus as an example of the baseline easiest difficulty and complexity of these subbosses. Each quest will have Raid Reward Chest (detailed below) upon completion.

Upon completion of the sub-quests, the end boss will spawn in the original central area. This boss will be extremely mechanically challenging and tuned to a level of difficulty that would commensurate with challenging raid bosses in other games in the genre. A good example of modern raid design difficulty would be Ohmna from Wildstar Genetic Archives or Nightmare Brontes from SWTOR Dread Fortress.
To be blunt, the end boss, like the ones mentioned above, will be especially mechanically challenging and guilds should not have the expectation to defeat the boss (or even get to the boss as the sub bosses will be challenging) until they have significant practice. Defeating the end boss of the raid will spawn a Glorious Raid Reward Chest.

The trash mobs in the raid should be somewhat challenging, akin to the Arah Elites. They should roam in in packs with paths that cross so players must be careful not to over-aggro. The trash packs should be mixed professions designed to have complimentary skill sets.

Part 2

Rewards

Trash mobs – In addition to the normal loot table for elite mobs, the trash have a good chance to drop a unique unrefined t7 mat (ore). The unrefined t7 mats are tradeable and have a relatively high vendor price.
Subbosses – In addition to normal legendary mob loot table, the sub-bosses will include a crafting recipe for unique ascended armor and weapon pieces and refined (ingot) versions of the t7 mats. Additionally they will have a rare chance to drop a weapon or armor box for the unique pieces.
End Boss – In addition to normal legendary mob loot table, the end boss will drop multiple pieces of the t7 refined mats and a chest containing either one of the unique ascended weapons or one of the armor pieces. Additionally, defeating the end boss will spawn the crafter who will allow players with sufficient resources to craft the armor or weapons. Ideally, the rewards would be balanced to provide the materials to craft at least one weapon or armor piece per full clear in addition to the piece for defeating the end boss.

Defeating the final boss will unlock an achievement title. Clearing the raid in under a set time (tuned to be moderately challenging to an experienced team but still forgiving of mistakes will unlock another title.

Example Raid An example raid would be “The Cleansing of Arah” where players would spawn in the Lupicus room and could move outward to through any of the 5 doors. There will be subquests in different areas of the dungeon, each with the sub boss. Upon completion of 6 sub quests the end boss will spawn in the Lupicus room, or a portal to the Lair of Zhaitan (hint, hint) will open there and the end boss will be combated.

I remain unconvinced that instancing all raid content is a good idea. There are plenty of open-world raid-like scenarios – Marionette and Dry Top for example – where it’s possible for ad-hoc additional players to contribute meaningfully without being amazing players.

So long as the organised group has the ability to start a map instance and get all their people in first it means that a) they don’t have to have a full map queue, and b) random players get to experience and complete this content without it being gated by membership to specific player communities.

Hello, my name is Light Guardian Jack and I’m one of the leaders of TTS, I’ve talked with the other leaders about what we would want from a Raiding system and I’ve come up with this proposal. To me, Raiding has always existed in Guild Wars 2 just in the form of Tequatl, the Triple Trouble Wurm, and even some living world events in Season 1. I would like new tools to allow more players to experience the same Raids as us and to serve as a platform so that Anet can deliver new content for all the community who desires quality High-Player count experiences.

Proposal Overview
An expansion of tools to allow current “Mega-Organized Events” and old Living Story events to become Raids to allow more inclusive play.

Goal of Proposal
-Provide more tools so that old “Mega-Organized events” can be organized easier.
-Allow for a variety of content to be presented to the player without too much work for the Developers
-Reduce the barriers that normally block most players from Raids.
-Revive old classic living world events fans of the game are screaming for a return.

Proposal Functionality
-Guilds would be allowed to create their own separate instances for either certain current world events (Mega-Organized Events) or old living story events (Marionette, Tower of nightmares, Scarlet Hologram fight), this could use the current “Guild World Event” Spawner.
-This instance would allow player up to a certain cap (15-150 depending on the raid)(could have multiple sizes for the same raid).
-Once inside, if the Guild does not have enough players to fill the instance, they may use the LFG tool to allow players to connect directly into the map from the LFG tool itself (there might need to be restrictions on how to control who gets into the raid but there are several different ways you could do this).

Associated Risks
-Even with the LFG tool, players may find organizing with other players to be difficult if they are in a small guild.
-Recycled content may not feel “difficult” enough to satisfy hardcore raiders.
-Players may abandon Open-World events in favor of instanced ones and thus alienating those who can’t network as well.

I believe that such a system would give developers the freedom to develop a variety of raiding content of various player counts without a lot of restrictions and would address many of the issues players have with raiding in other games and in this current game. The Triple Trouble world event is fun but often hear how players are sick of doing the “overflow dance” to try to get into an organized instance and I hardly blame them. Instead of abandoning old content, build this new content onto of the old raiding system and old raiding communities to allow us to include even more players.

I also personally would enjoy many old Season 1 living story events to return as revamped Raids. The Tower of Nightmares could return as an epic 10-15 raid where you have to clear all the bosses to climb up the tower, the Battle of the Breachmaker could be revamped into a small 25 man raid with everyone split up fighting the 3 color knights in the beginning and coming together to fight scarlet and the Marionette could return. The possibilities are endless once we break apart from this 5 man dungeon or 150 man open world box.

I also want to point out the “Smaller” or “locked scaling” instances of the existing raid Mega-Bosses (Tequatl and Triple trouble) would be possible under this system and every raid new and old could in theory have multiple raid sizes with scaling in order to accommodate multiple sizes of guilds.

I believe that such a system would encourage more players of various skill levels to have a greater variety of content to indulge in with minimum barriers to entry.

Boohoo..
Bye frand..
See you in 2015 when an expansion is released..

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

Shockwave.1230:

How is PvP not viable for normal players?

4v5 , people had enough , no in game ladders , no progression , same game format , should i carry on ?

There is a huge need for deathmach 2v2/3v3 arenas. Conquest should be 10vs10/15vs15 on bigger maps, preferably with 5 nodes. I would recommend redesigning existing maps to be bigger, instead of creating a brand new set. Also, add some achievements rewarded with titles which are not about flat exp accumulation.

Creating new game modes will split the community (what is avoided by devs like fire), but it is going to increase total sPvP population, what is essential for it to survive.

Garrisyl.7402:

The main reason for this is probably that sPvP is so unforgiving to new players. The first thing that happens to a new player in a match (after spending 10 minutes figuring out how to join one) is being totally lost and running around randomly, then getting facestomped by a Legendary Champion D/D ele. He then respawns and runs to another point, where he gets double-teamed by a p/s engi and a mesmer. He then proceeds to quit the game, because that wasn’t fun at all.

The more people do this, the higher the concentration of veteran players becomes compared to new players, which in turn leads to a higher chance of getting matched up with veterans, and more new people quitting. It’s a cycle.

The only thing that can save sPvP isn’t some tournament or desperately pushing esports™, but to make pvp more accessible to newcomers by creating some sheltered learning enviroment or training area, where they can try pvp without running into highly-skilled people, and without the pressure of a scoring system.

Just my 2 cents.

100% agree with this! New players are just left with nothing to guide them. There are a post in the forums, but the majority of players never go to the forums to learn basics. We need a way better training area, with preferably a training match with AI that just do basic rotations. The veteran players also need to lend a hand to new players. I have seen people ask for hours in the mists for help with literally no response. I tend to do my best to help these guys understand the basics, but that ain’t enough in the long run.

What also seriously need to stop is the constant downgrading of players. If someone is getting roflstomped there’s a good chance that they will be told that they suck and they should get back to PvE. Those who say that are usually those who complain about PvP having few players.. Instead of do this they could instead offer tips or assistanse so that the new player can learn and enjoy PvP as much as we do.

There are a huge blame on ANet for having bad leaderboards (someone with under 15 matches was no 1 in eu for a few days….) and bad matchmaking. They should add two more queues, both solo and team, but not ranked and with hidden mmr. This would make it a perfect practice arena for new players and veterans to really try out tactics without hurting their score.

Needs 8v8 back. 5v5 is too formulaic for casual PvP’ers and rarely is 5v5.

Conquest,where “bunker holding points builds” takes in a bigger percentage than actual player vs player limit builds→unstable balance→messes up player mentality→poor pvp experience.

The main reason for this is probably that sPvP is so unforgiving to new players. The first thing that happens to a new player in a match (after spending 10 minutes figuring out how to join one) is being totally lost and running around randomly, then getting facestomped by a Legendary Champion D/D ele. He then respawns and runs to another point, where he gets double-teamed by a p/s engi and a mesmer. He then proceeds to quit the game, because that wasn’t fun at all.

The more people do this, the higher the concentration of veteran players becomes compared to new players, which in turn leads to a higher chance of getting matched up with veterans, and more new people quitting. It’s a cycle.

The only thing that can save sPvP isn’t some tournament or desperately pushing esports™, but to make pvp more accessible to newcomers by creating some sheltered learning enviroment or training area, where they can try pvp without running into highly-skilled people, and without the pressure of a scoring system.

Just my 2 cents.

Browrain.7346:

Simon.3794:

Browrain.7346:

So you have perma weakness AND burning on you. What kind of super-engis are you facing.

balth IP engi with elixir gun.

Balth IP isnt perma burn.

still infinitely close to perma

Clearly no one put any thought in when this map was made. Classes with a controlled pull (engi, mesmer, thief) have a very clear advantage in this map. This map should be removed from solo queue and anyone who says otherwise doesn’t want so because they main engi, mesmer, or thief. Before anyone here argues with me for no reason, I’m not bashing any of those classes, I’m bashing the map and its presence in solo queue. Oh and I’d like to ask, why I get the map 3/4 times when I solo queue, that number is no exaggeration, it’s literally 3/4 times i get it.

Reduce duration of Moa by half.
Reduce cooldown of Moa by half.

best fix eu.

Lux.7169:

That’s extremely easy for me to read. Everyone I PvP with would have no problem dodging or interrupting it because of the animation.

I could distinguish that from the Mesmer heals from the clone activations from the auto attacks extremely easily and so can all the other top players and mediocre players if they knew what to look for.

I will be home and online all night if you want to duel and try to land that on me.

You are making pointless claims.

Moa Morph is not easy to read. Skills like Entangle (ranger clearly jumping in the air), Ether Feast (clear blue aura which is in contrast with the pinkiness of mesmer), Doom (clear reaper animation over the Necro’s head) or Signet of Rage (clear signer simbol above warrior’s head) are easy to read skills.

While you’re fighting a Mesmer, you’re fighting with at least 3 pinky AI entities and, of course, the mesmer himself, who has also the ability to stealth and cast Moa Morph while invisible. If you add this to the fact that PvP is overcrowded by Asura-rats, whose model (and animations) are even smaller, it is extremely hard to read that pink aura that telegraphs a Moa Morph coming.

The situation is even worse when you are fighting on a node against multiple players. In that case, reading Moa Morph is extremely hard because you don’t have only to look for the real mesmer among the clones (it happens that sometimes you target the wrong mesmer after he stealths), but you have also to pay attention to the other enemies animations and Moa Morph doesn’t clearly jump to your eyes.

If the aura was green, yellow or any other color that has contrast with the pink theme of the Mesmer (like Ether Feast), then I would agree that Moa Morph is easy to read.

You can claim that you can read Moa Morph as much as you want, but when making comparisons to some other skills, Moa Morph is quite hard to notice and in most cases, the animation fades between butterflies and pinkiness.

Lux.7169:

sorrow.2364:

Lux.7169:

Dodging isn’t the only counter play. As was mentioned earlier its a telegraphed skill that is not difficult to interrupt and you can LoS obstruct or you can blind the Mesmer. Dodging is just one of the several counter plays, not the only one.

Please, avoid to spread misinformation.
The Moa Morph animation is extremely hard to read.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9cqTJ2RdjJg

There is no telegraph at all. It is just an average, anonymous, pinky mesmer skill.

That’s extremely easy for me to read. Everyone I PvP with would have no problem dodging or interrupting it because of the animation.

I could distinguish that from the Mesmer heals from the clone activations from the auto attacks extremely easily and so can all the other top players and mediocre players if they knew what to look for.

I will be home and online all night if you want to duel and try to land that on me.

Lol duel. What about a nice fight involving asuras, minion mancers and a spirit ranger or two?

Lux.7169:

Dodging isn’t the only counter play. As was mentioned earlier its a telegraphed skill that is not difficult to interrupt and you can LoS obstruct or you can blind the Mesmer. Dodging is just one of the several counter plays, not the only one.

Please, avoid to spread misinformation.
The Moa Morph animation is extremely hard to read.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9cqTJ2RdjJg

There is no telegraph at all. It is just an average, anonymous, pinky mesmer skill.

To rush far at the start, you should either be able to win the 1v1 or stall the 1v2 long enough for it to be an advantage. It can be a viable strategy, and is often a very good way to carry teams in solo queue. You don’t even necessarily need to decap the point if you can hold multiple opponents there long enough. It’s not a cut and dry issue, but if you die too fast, it’s not a good idea.

Julie Yann.5379:

I thought that was what Hotjoin was for.

Not even close. Hotjoins are noob stomping ground, one-sided beatings. Playing against AI’s will help new players understand the fundamentals of spvp before they move up to hot joins.