Guild Wars 2

tobascodagama.2961:

Chaos Archangel.5071:

You forgot.. It’s also a stream of projectiles. Which means.. Bodyblocked, absorbed, blocked, reflected..

… Or my favorite, the humble dodge that negates 90% of the attack.

Pfft, who dodges in this game?

obviously not the golems or Svanir/Utahein that the devs seem to balance off of

StickerHappy.8052:

DD tweak is justified Imo. 3x bleed stacks per hit is not fun on the duelist.
Full rabid gear on pvp pre patch can let you proc 8-9 stacks bleed with duelist using only sharper images (assuming they hit)

8-9 stacks of bleed from an attack that hits 8 times? 3x bleed stacks per hit, what?

I understand you’re trying to make a point, but points are generally accepted better when you’re not blatantly falsifying your examples.

Ryou.2398:

I dont get how some of you can be so vile, everything is still in beta and you get one thing taken taken away so you complain about druids, why fan only one class? Everyone should try to play more then one anyways.

Did you even read the thread?

Bryzy.2719:

Urgh another “Ranger finally got something nice so let’s QQ” thread.

Just back off and let us be viable for once.

Ironically, not a single person seriously QQ’d in this thread. And there are some compliments to the elite.

=D Reading helps.

Silverkey.2078:

That is amazing! This was extremely clumsy to use. For example, I recently played some PvP with signet of inspiration and focus and it was hard to sync the swiftness at the beginning of the match to help my team AND myself (the signet procs right at the beginning of the match after the 10s countdown so I could not benefit from the curtain I put on the ground for my allies…)

exactly…..it was very frustrating when that small SoI swift would pop before i got to my curtain.

TheFrighteningFrenchFry.3275:

What math?

This math. The alacrity support build (jetlag) is mathematically proven efficient.

TheFrighteningFrenchFry.3275:

The math that shows that sword has a better auto attack while scepter 3 has nice damage? That in no way shape or form tells us 1 scepter 1 sword>2swords.

A swing aaaand a miss.
No one told “scepter is superior to sword”. It was said “scepter as a second main hand is superior to sword as a second main hand in the described build”. Sword is still the go to first main hand.
The math in this thread showed that CI is a great damage skill, almost putting scepter DPS on par to sword. While rotating from sword to scepter, you benefit from sword AA and CI and alacrity (since CI has a CD), while not suffering too much from the scepter AA (since you still camp sword most of the time, and scepter AA improve your ubiquitous shatters).

TheFrighteningFrenchFry.3275:

“As for the comparison with the guardian staff: no one is telling you to use a scepter right now. This option is only considered in the scope of the build discussed in this thread.”

No, the one guy said: Switch a Sword for a Sceptre, it does nearly as much autoattack DPS at close range and Confusing Images does more damage than Blurred Frenzy; plus since you’re Shattering Ether Clone is a benefit rather than a hindrance. That’s already past the consideration phase and moved into the you should take it phase.

Embolism was commenting your version of the build, where you did put two sword main hand. He adviced to take a different main hand since you gain CI (synergy with alacrity, better burst) instead of nothing by swapping. Staff isn’t considered because you made a build with two main hand. He wasn’t commenting on the current state of the scepter. Then this happened:

Remember, this is for pve dungeons not pvp. This is the first time I’v had someone tell me scepter was even close to useful in dungeons.

So, you rejected it because scepter is bad in the current meta, totally ignoring the fact that scepter makes perfect sense in the proposed build, which is different on a conceptual level from the current meta. Of course no one would find the scepter close to useful now. Because as of now, phantasm are the be-all-end-all of dungeon mesmers. Scepter is bad because it is a shatter weapon, and shatters are bad in pve. If shatters are good, why shouldn’t the scepter be considered?

TheFrighteningFrenchFry.3275:

And I’m just trying to show why I don’t think it’s a good idea to take scepter. It would seem I’ve at least the staff out of the way ( hopefully, because that’s what I thought about the scepter and then people are like its already proven you should take a scepter its just your ego getting into your way )

Problem is, you show only why the scepter is bad right now, and right now the jetlag build doesn’t exist. The whole reason this thread was created was because the meta will change. Discuss those change, not the current state.

nearlight.3064:

let you lick targets down

?

TheFrighteningFrenchFry.3275:

“and conjures a clone”

Exactly my point. The skill might aswell not exist for pve then.

Enough. This is wrong, and has been every time you mentioned it.

At the rate a support chrono needs to shatter, you will NOT be getting 3 phantasms up at any given moment unless you totally screw up your rotations, or at the beginning of a fight (where you don’t need to worry about summoning a clone).

I tested the phantasm rotations extensively, and it was tricky enough to keep up 2 phantasms persistently with that as my only objective. This experience was repeated by many of the people discussing the uses of chronophantasma during the BWEs.
The only way to keep up 3 phantasms was the usual method: wait until they recharge. Shattering with any kind of speed just cuts down the phantasms, and puts you back at square one.

All you are accomplishing with your dogmatic insistence is proving to us that you didn’t actually try it.

There is nothing wrong with summoning clones, because the only time this build might have 3 phantasms is right at the start, when you shatter them immediately.

Edit: I should note that I WAS able to keep 3 phantasms up at a time by rotating between iDefender, Signet of Ether, and (sometimes) iDisenchanter. That was a huge waste of utility slots, however, as a clone serves just as well for shatters, meaning I was spending a slot for a single occasional attack from iDisenchanter or iDefender, and a little extra recharge on all phantasms. It’s also not an option available to the well support build, for obvious reasons.

Alrighty folks, this is gonna be a pretty long one, so buckle up.

What Would Change?

The biggest change is as follows:

Phantasms can only be damaged if either the phantasm itself or the Mesmer that owns it is targeted. Attacks used without a target will not deal damage to the phantasm.

That’s the core of the idea. In addition to that, phantasm hp would be reduced significantly, allowing for the phantasms to be destroyed much easier when actually targeted.

This would obviously be a pretty huge change, so I’m going to go through and try to analyze the effects it would have on every aspect of the game.

Why this mechanic?

I picked this mechanic because it already has an existing implementation in the game. One of the mistlock instabilities causes non-targeted mobs to take half damage. This means that implementing this idea wouldn’t be entirely new development, but could pull from an already existing mechanic.

Effect in a 1v1 (Self)

Not going to lie, phantasm builds and phantasms in general are going to take a hit here. Since either the Mesmer or their phantasms are generally targeted in a 1v1, this means that the damage reduction portion of the change will rarely activate, but phantasms will be easier to kill due to their lower health.

However, given the recent focus on incorporating shattering into most/all builds, I don’t see this as too huge of an issue. If a decent shatter cadence is maintained, phantasms should still last long enough to do their job and then shatter.

Effects in a 1v1 (others)

Folks fighting you won’t notice a huge difference here. Phantasms will squish easier, but they’ve always squished pretty quickly. The only time when this change might be noticed is if someone is attempting to simply spam aoe without bothering to choose a target cough d/d ele cough, in which case the phantasms will get a lot harder to kill.

Effects in a PvP Teamfight (self)

This is where the change really starts to shine. Generally, team fights have enough aoe pressure that you’re lucky if a phantasm survives for more than one attack. With this change, the phantasms will be resilient unless directly targeted.

At this point, your personal positioning and playstyle starts to matter more as well. If you’re bunkering down on the point, you’ll be a main target and will be taking a lot of damage to your phantasms. If you’re more of a transient target playing a bursty role or more of a lockdown support, you’re going to be in a position to avoid that direct targeting most of the time, which lets your phantasms really do their job.

Effects in a PvP Teamfight (others)

People are going to start noting that Mesmer phantasms actually do things if they’re left alone. Since the phantasms have low health, removing them will be as simple as a quick target and then autoattack, but it will be forcing a direct response to the attack rather than laying aoes as normal and letting that be sufficient defense from any phantasms.

On this note, it’s extremely important that this change is communicated well. If it is implemented without communication, the simple mechanic of needing to target to do damage will appear to be a broken damage immunity without more investigation. Communicating the change ensures that everyone knows what’s going on with the phantasms, and how to react to them.

Effects in WvW Groups (self)

This is one of the areas where the most marked improvements will occur. Currently phantasms are guaranteed to die instantly upon their use (instantly minus one second with protected phantasms). With this change, the phantasms will remain as dangerous attacks until targeted and killed. Since targeting the Mesmer itself will be rare in this environment, it means that the phantasm will need to be the entity that gets targeted.

This will put mesmers on a much more even footing with most other classes in respect to area damage (yes, even with chrono wells). This will allow us to use aoe phantasms such as the zerker and the warden to actually act as a more persistent aoe similar to what other classes can do. It also allows for a boost to the strike team role as it lets single target phantasms perform their job, whereas they simply die before even getting an attack off right now.

Effects in WvW Groups (other)

People are going to start noticing phantasms now, and will need to react to them. If you put a lava font or meteor shower or combustive shot or any other strong aoe near a group, it forces a reaction of some sort, whether to move or block or otherwise mitigate it. Now, phantasms will cause that too, in the form of targeting and then killing. This will be a new aspect of response that hasn’t ever been needed before, and people will probably take a bit of time to adjust to it.

Effects in PvE

This one I’m most unsure about, primarily because I don’t know if monsters use a targeting schema that lines up with how players do. However, I’m going to assume that they do, and analyze it based on that.

Random aoes and cleaving attacks will no longer deal damage to phantasms, as they must be targeted. If the boss actually turns and munches on it it’ll die, but not other than that. Additionally, this actually makes it advantageous for the Mesmer to not have aggro from the boss, since that targeting would also allow the phantasms to die. This may be particularly helpful in raids, as aggro mechanics have been suggested as being an addition here.

Overall in PvE, this change provides a decisive mechanic that a Mesmer can use to sustain their phantasms much more effectively. It’s not perfect survivability and isn’t intended as such, but will drastically improve the damage capabilities of Mesmer in PvE.

Fringe Cases

This section is pretty much just about the pDefender. Unlike the other phantasms, this phantasm functions purely off of being an hp sponge for your group. This means that the hp reduction inherent to this change would not allow it to work.

I’m not entirely sure how it should be handled quite honestly. The change could simply not apply to it, or apply in some sort of limited aspect without the hp reduction, or its specific mitigation mechanic could be modified.

Conclusion

That’s pretty much it. This suggestion, if implemented, would completely revamp the function and form of phantasm survivability in this game, pushing it from purely health-based, which scales poorly in PvE and WvW, but too strongly in PvP and 1v1, to a mechanic based system that scales appropriately throughout all game types. This change would not have a negative impact on the abilities of others to fight a focused battle with a Mesmer, but would enhance Mesmer offense in the areas that it is typically extremely weak in: large fights and PvE.

As always, I’m open to suggestions on how to improve this idea.

I hate to break it to you, but let me put this bluntly:

Nobody on this forum, let alone Robert Gee, who I can assure you is incredibly busy right now, is going to watch 110 minutes of somebody talking. This is a bit more than your two cents, it’s more along the lines of the whole bank account.

If you want to give feedback, make it directed and to the point. Bullets work nicely for this. Headings do too. Mindblowingly long youtube videos do not.

BetterHappy.2517:

This information is worth the time

It might be.

But I think the point is this:
Why would anyone who has anything else to do at all (say, a developer :P ) spend nearly 2 hours consuming information in one of the slowest formats available, when it could be consumed in 5-10 minutes tops?

Text is nice. Imagine if all of our replies here were always videos of us blabbering. Imagine how slow and impractical that would be.

That is because the information/time density of videos is extremely low unless you are fully utilizing the graphics to a degree where pictures of short gifs or short videos at specific points in the text wouldn’t work.

I think that was Fay’s point. Video is a very bad format for conveying what is essentially textual (you, talking) information. It’s extremely slow, and even as someone watching this forum in their spare time I simply lack the time to spend on so little information. Now think about a dev who gets paid or this, and who is probably already pulling all-nighters so close to release. Really think he’d prefer 110 minutes video for 5 minutes worth of information?

I’m usualy skeptical about opening up a youtube even when I have an idea of the content. 110 min’s of talking I hear? err

-_-u

Here’s a better idea

• List your core concept with bullet points
• They’re really helpful
• I always read bullet points

Ithilwen.1529:

This is the second time the same thing has happened.

I’m in my fourth year of play 12K+ ap and running approximately 192% magic find.
In that 3+ years I’ve gotten 4 precursor look-alikes.

For the second time, an inexperienced player (1700 ap, not much magic find ) has gotten a precursor on CM right in front of me. On the same drop I got blues and whites.

This time an ele walked away with Spark, the precursor I’ve wanted for years. Last time the player was on his first dungeon run and walked away with Colossus.

Does ANET punish specific players by reducing drops? Does Magic Find work?

Yes, they singled you out the moment you made an account. Maybe it something you said once, or the color of your shirt, but you upset them somehow and so they made sure to flip the anti-precursor switch so that you can’t have one.

Frenchfry, I mean no offense whatsoever honestly it seems like you like to argue for the sake of arguing. And you throw hyperbole around like a major league pitcher.

You keep challenging people and telling them they’re wrong based off your… opinion? You’re arguing against proven facts and numbers with situational scenarios and your own ideals, but you’re not providing anything (no math, no videos, no references) to back your claims up.

Your own personal experiences are not the be-all-end-all, and you’re making it very difficult to separate fact from opinion. You can’t keep saying things like “tons of places you can do that.” or “plenty of quickness without shield” with no background to your claims. For one, the only other time Chronomancer has Quickness is with Seize the Moment, but that’s a pretty drastic change to the build.

So please, just a bit less confrontation would be appreciated unless you know your facts are solid.

Really depends on how much chill you can put out. A bunch of little chills that you can keep putting out are far better than just one big long chill, the long one will get cleansed, but the shorter ones will make the enemy wait until you finish applying them, or cleanse early and still take a good amount of chill, and then their Condi cleanse will be on cooldown as well.

EdgarMTanaka.7291:

Honestly I beleave (My opinion that is) that making umm… More armor to make males look better will not have that big of impact. Yes it is as Zaoda says that there would be nice for more jackets, shirts, vests and stuff for medium armor and less robes for Light and so on. (This goes for females too actually)

I don’t think though that that will change the fact that the playerbase is mostly male and most males do like girl and thus rather like to see a girls behind rather than a males behind when they run around in the game.

About the hair, I realy like the human male hair and I am pretty sure that there will be more in the future.

I’ve never got the whole “rather see a girl’s behind” reasoning behind playing a female character. It just seems like the default response to the question “Why are you playing as a girl?”. I’m zoomed out as far as possible whilst playing, so I can actually see all the action around me. Zoomed in at your character’s butt is going to reduce how effective you’re performing.

There’s nothing wrong with guys playing a female character, but that reason has become one of the biggest cliches out there =P

There are quite a few professions that have only a single underwater elite. Unfortunately, I don’t believe that Anet will bother with this until they decide to revamp underwater combat for the water dragon expansion. Hopefully it will be the expansion after HoT because the revamp is sorely needed.

So watching the rampant cross-comparisons between the new Especs and existing professions for the completely transparent reason of hoping for buff for your own preferred profession — also known as the ‘Grass is always greener in your frightened mind’ effect — I thought we could get the jump on what profession Druid outshines.

• “Because it has glyphs AND medium armor and good downed skills its obviously a better Elementalist than Elementaist, and its mere existence is gonna shuffle D/D Eles right off the top spot in sPvP.”

Am I doing this utterly senseless fretting right? Wait, wait- let me try again.

• “With Druid adding nothing to the Ranger’s kit for going into stealth, the Druid is far more powerful than any Theif build that relies on stealth for its survivability.

Hold on, I’ve got it!

• “Because it has a staff and better access to fury, now that we have Druids no one will ever play Necro again!”

There, that had the sort of terse, complete nonsense masquerading as logic I’ve come to expect from these threads.

By all means, please fill in your own profession that Druid will obsolete. Because you know an Espec still shackled to the ol’ AI ball and chain is obviously the new top tier threat on the field in every mode…

A Mesmer that relies solely on hiding out in stealth for long periods is a trash Mesmer anyway. I’m actually looking forward to all this stealth detection, maybe all the PU FOTM Mesmers will move on.

Welcome to every game forum, ever. 80% of forum threads are complaints of some form.

Hello my dear fellow Guild Wars 2 players and (possibly) fashion victims!

So here is a burning issue, that has been bothering me and some of my friends for quite a while now.

We’ve seen so many complaints about the female armors beeing way too skimpy while the male ones are fully covered, clunky and (mostly) pretty horrible)

So heres the idea… Why not have the option to hide tops?
I mean… it’s summer, right? People sunbathe all the time…

Why?
Why not? We can hide helmets, gloves, shoulders… I see no reason why we would not be able to hide tops. That would open many new directions the fashion can go into!

Not-lore-friendly? Lets talk about bunny ears, glasses, scarves, flying carpets and mini llamas

“But I dont wanna look at naked norns and chars anyway!”
I’d much rather look at them without a shirt only than fully naked…

Now in all honesty.
Personally I think a very little change like that would be nice, could make characters feel very “brawl-ish” as berserkers, ninja-monk daredevils, crazy-anime reapers and everything you can possibly think of! Share your ideas.
We’ve been asking for more revealing male armors for a very very long time, and we haven’t gotten any at all, this little feature would make everyone who is craving more male skin in GW2 happy!

I guess this suggestion can also apply to female characters, then again they do have a variety of bras to choose from already, so I dont know why would they choose the ugly yellow one they’re wearing anyway

So, I am aware this will probably couse a lot of hate, flames and bumhurt people (for whatever reason), but hey! We all are entitled to our own opinion.

So what you guys thins?

…..I sense salt. /15 char.

HypnoticEyes.2683:

Deceptive EvasionA lot has been said about Deceptive Evasion as a trait, with chronomancer we get IR and still the feedback has been quite consistent: Deceptive Evasion is a must for virtually any build. So why should it be baseline:

…no. There are quite a few builds that don’t use DE, and chrono is decreasing that reliance even more.

HypnoticEyes.2683:

During all changes many classes got access to cleaving skills on auto attacks (necro dagger for example), while clones never changed.

Thief auto and necro auto got adjusted to 2 target attacks. This is hardly a game-changer for illusion survivability.

HypnoticEyes.2683:

Phantasms in pvp/wvw
For pve I think they are at a fine spot.

Uh…are you for serious right now?

HypnoticEyes.2683:

At worldbosses like Golem Mark II

/facepalm

HypnoticEyes.2683:

1 really sluggish still: The scepter.

Ok, I’m with you so far.

HypnoticEyes.2683:

Sadly: The auto attack is what really hurts when you compare it to other classes.

Yep yep, still doing good!

HypnoticEyes.2683:

The attack itself is decent both in damage and speed, but it’s the torment that is out of sink.

allofmywat.jpg

Are you for serious right now?

HypnoticEyes.2683:

A surplus of stability stacks/resistance for several classes which makes them impossible to land.

You do realize that resistance doesn’t affect interrupts, right? You also realize that mesmer has ample access to boon strip, right?

HypnoticEyes.2683:

While many other classes got unblockable skills/trait we got no skills of importance (other then gs3) doing just that.

I’m trying really really hard to figure out how you’ve managed to connect unblockable skills with interrupts and stability, but I’m failing.

To summarize: For real?

wow, people who want to feel bad will go to any lengths to do so.
In other words what are you on?

Embolism.8106:

Bumy.8057:

Embolism.8106:

Bumy.8057:

choovanski.5462:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Bumy.8057:

choovanski.5462:

evades, blocks, and most invuns work against condi damage, and you have resistance

I don’t know how delusional you are but, evades and blocks do nothing against condition damage. You can’t evade conditions nor block them once they are applied to you the only way to get rid of them is through cleanse.

You could try avoiding the application. It’s no harder than avoiding a Power based attack.

For example, Grasping Dead is no harder to avoid than Maul, but I bet I know which one you dodge and which you ignore at the time.

no wonder these players think condi is OP. they aren’t smart enough to think of blocking or evading the attacks that apply the condis

You do know why condi builds are so prevalent? Because its a foolproof and mindless gameplay, something the carebears / casuals adore. It doesn’t matter if you attempt to ’ evade or block the attacks that apply the condis ’ because the relevant condi builds APPLY CONDITIONS ON AUTO ATTACK ontop of the ’ condi burst skills ‘. So even if you use your defensive abilities dealing with just the condi burst, then you’re kitten out of luck because in 3 seconds your gonna have another 10+ confusion stacks and 10+ torment stacks killing you regardless of if your moving / not attacking.

Ether Bolt: 2s Torment (it tickles). Ether Blast: 3s Torment (stop that!). Ether Clone: nothing.

Winds of Chaos: 33% chance 7s Bleed (yawn). 33% chance 1s Burning (wow so OP). 33% 5s Vulnerability (I am undone!).
.

Wow! Great response! You really proved your point by saying things like ’ it tickles ’, ’ yawn ’ and ’stop that! ’. Just another delusional nutjob trying to justify his abuse of over the top condition damage scaling.

Okay. Then please state for the record that you believe 2/3s Torment and 66% chance to apply 7s Bleeding or 1s Burning is OP and is what condition builds use to kill you after you mitigate their burst.

I was trying to explain this to Bumy the other day. He wasn’t able to understand that the confusion/torment stacks that were killing him didn’t come from auto-attacks, but instead, from shatters, the same source of massive damage in power builds. The auto-attack damage is marginal compared to the conditions applied from the shatters, which can and should be dodged, avoided, or what have you, the same as when up against a power build.

Those condition shatters also have to be timed to be effective. That condition burst has to be stacked to really kill you. And… because it’s primarily based on Confustion/Torment damage, that means the target also has to contribute to making the damage effective enough to result in a kill.

So, follow me on this… If a Mesmer using conditions to kill you is bad because doing so takes no skill, then, because the only meaningful damage comes from Confusion/Torment applied via shatters, and requires the target to also contribute by continuing to attack/move to result in enough damage to kill, then what does that make the target? Worse?

I think most likely it went something like this:

{Voice from upper management} “We are losing population because it has been so long since we had any kind of event! Make something happen quick!”

{Voice from over worked Dev team} “We ca make a generic Mordrem invasion event and recycle rewards from the old Scarlet Invasion Sir.”

{Voice from upper management} “That will have to do, have it ready in one hour!”

Don’t be upset at the Devs for this events short comings, I have a feeling the blame lies much further up the food chain.

The All’s Well change created an entirely new build: Alacrity/Quickness support.

The All’s Well change left a lot of people scrambling for more condi cleansing. It’s been suggested that Well of Eternity be modified to cleanse condis, and that suggestion has been met with general approval.

Illusionary Reversion killed rolling your face across the f-keys to win, but made every other build that used it even more reliant on Chronophantasma and/or DE.

The Chronophantasma change was met with a large “?”, and people still suggesting that they just change it so phantasms inherit their predecessor’s attack timer.

Despite weakening personal alacrity generation overall, the alacrity change combined with the IR nerf made Improved Alacrity arguably stronger than IR. Builds that take IR over IA tend to also take Chronophantasma, with some few exceptions (like taking Deceptive Evasion and Mirror Images).

The nerf to slow on iAvenger didn’t seem to change much, except to make people realize that iAvenger just kind of sucks in PvE.

People noticed that Tides of Time is kind of amazing, except for that crazy issue that makes it go poof if it hits anything (like the open air on the edge of the tree platforms in Verdant Brink). Not a bug, apparently???

Revenant made us realize once again that despite all the qq about condi mesmers, we still have less damage potential than pretty much every other condi class.