Guild Wars 2

Closed guild groups can even use multiple commanded tags at a same time (each member of a "gank"group). Due to poor targeting and guild support system they can see the driver only if he pops his commander tag while each group internally uses target system to focus low and squishy people.
Solution would be to incentivize your community to assign a separate color tag for closed group (e.a. blue for guild groups only, other colors for public raids etc…)

His absence fits the state of WvW.

I’m not proud of it, but I’ve listened to that song 3 times in a row now. That’s like the mesmer battle cry. Fabulous.

To all non mesmers: We don’t actually mean to hurt anyone. The amount of love we emit is just too much for some to handle, and that sometimes leads to unfortunate deaths.

Who has a new computer? THIZZ GUY!

After a bit of a hiatus I shall be back on GW this weekend, and as always I’ve got my sights set on PvP. Just giving a heads up that I’ll be sending out mass w/ for some duels and some team matches around 8pm EST saturday and/or sunday.

Also, Sunday, lets make something happen. Dungeons anyone?

UPDATE: This will now be an event that we’ll go for every Saturday and/or Sunday.

OTHER UPDATE: Since I spent the majority of my time on NA last weekend, this weekend I shall be getting smacked up in EU. =P

Really enjoyed the videos, some good fights there!

MailMail.6534:

If I totally made this up in my head, please tell me now and delete this thread

You totally made this up in your head. MoR has never removed conditions with mender’s purity when you charge it. It’s always been a bit of an odd case that way.

Whether or not it should is a discussion worth having, but it never has.

Just wanted to say thanks Josh for organizing this. The map looks incredible, I hope we get to try it soon.

DarkSyze.8627:

I think Arena net believe that to add Pve content in wvw will make it challenge and fun: No! Pve is Pve, Not Wvw or PVp. I spend more time in Pve because it is challenge and Fun. I spend less time with Pvp and Wvw because it is not challenge and fun: so why would i play Wvw for pve content? do not make sense at all.

Again and again: the reason why wvw is not challenge and not fun is because there is 4 class that require less-no skill to do very high damage with almost no risk + low-zero cooldown.

There is more reason why wvw is not fun but with my experience: that is why i am spend less of my time there. I do not want to waste a lot of my time in a game mode to die every second and to not have fun.

In Pve: it is not even like that at all: except for some very high mobs+boss compare to wvw where these 4 class are there all the time.

Last and again: the reason why there is different game is for more challenge and for more fun. And more Important: to have diferent experience. Again, to have diferent experience, Not same experience.

Style: your research, investigation and evidence is very sad to know, Arena net is against work with us player to make the game challenge and fun. I will now not waste my time anymore to ask for challenge and fun.

Example:Relationship- it is like finding evidence that the person you are in relationship with: is using you for their own benefit.

PvE. That’s what I’m wondering. Why this red-hot hatred towards “PvE”? You say you want things to be more fun and challenging? How? By removing “PvE” from the map completely, meaning no keeps and no towers and no lords? No verticality? Personally, I find that boring and uninteresting.

People have to stop shunning PvE as if it is the bane of all things good. PvE are mechanics to add additional strategy, PvE is the very basic foundation and base which all other game modes are built from. Even sPvP, the game mode furthest away from PvE in GW2, has PvE elements in it, and we don’t complain about it[Except Skyhammer, but only for the same reasons people dislike EotM. Auto-kill CC without the chance to Rally]. It’s only when these elements intrude on our game instead of complimenting it that we should be angry. Only when the environment is “OP” in terms that it overshadows player efforts that we can say “this is too much”.

The Oasis event won’t be killing players, nor will the upgraded Lords be able to single-handedly take out a zerg. From how I perceived it, dinosaurs are fodder, the Lords are simply meant to be more useful and less helpless when the defenders try defending, and the Shrine mechanics will simply compliment the WvW experience.

This is just my opinion, of course, but I feel like everyone’s acting like “PvE” is some kind of dirty cuss.

I think the reasoning of having the 50% RNG on CS right now is because of the “possibility” of a staggered 3 clone(3 second stun) Diversion. And the “possibility” of being totally stunned/shutdown inside a Chaos Storm. It would be easy to Diversion into a Chaos Storm and completely shutdown the player.

Hence, if we were to get a 100% CS, then there would need to be an ICD or something similar to prevent those “possibilities”.

Unfortunately, as with everything Mesmer, we are nerfed based on the “possibility” of “all the stars aligning” and all that RNG triggering in our favor.

Is a rework for Eternal Battlegrounds planned?
Will there be masteries for the new Shield-Generator siege?
Will Golems be able to stealth in earth-keep s3 bonus?
Will Golems gain fire/lava-immunity by firekeeps s3 bonus?
Will Golems be able to use jumping platforms and gain falling-dmg immunity from air-keeps s1/3 bonus?
Will shrine-bonus be deactivated immediately if enemies capture a shrine, or do they have a deactivation-period of several seconds?
Will the Oasis event just damage gates or completely break them?
Will Shield Generators be able to block incoming shots from the Oasis event?
Will you be able to stealth / gain immunity while wielding power-cells from the Oasis event?
Will moving power-cells still be shown on the map if the carrying player is stealthed (implied they can stealth)?
Is there a change to the old upgrade-System to towers/keeps on this map, or can players still order upgrades for walls/gates/siege/guards/services via the known supply-merchant?

Does this map provide open spaces devoid of environmental effects for the dozens of guilds that play WvW purely for the fights?

Do you believe this will separate the zergs and create multiple small squads instead?
Do you believe this borderland will focus more on sieges rather then actual fights?
Does the vertical aspect reduces the map size in comparison to the others?
What do you expect of its meta considering the stab patch?
Were steps taken to prevent it from ending like EoftM?
Do you believe this map will separate the active population of WvW due it’s different design something similar to PvP modes in same queue?
Will a test version be available?

Chaos Archangel.5071:

• What do you feel the Mesmer is currently lacking ATM?

The ability to choose a playstyle and have every single skill on my bar support my chosen style.

Every single mesmer is required to take phantasms and the exact same four shatter skills, despite both of them being polar opposite playstyles. You cannot become an interrupt mesmer without carrying around vestigial illusion mechanics, and you can’t choose between shatters and phantasms without the other cluttering your bar. Mesmers just don’t have enough trait points to make both of their mandatory mechanics effective, nor can they spec into something else without leaving their two different illusion mechanics underpowered.

We should be able to choose our playstyles and have the mechanics support us 100%. There is absolutely no logical reason for anything less.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

• What is your one (reasonable) Mesmer wish?

Separate Phantasm and Shatters through the specialization system.

The default Shattercaster Mesmer should have the ability to choose which shatters they bring along (allowing wonderful mayhem such kittenters that torment, chill, create pulsing AoE pools, grant you stealth, immobilize the enemy, etc). Deceptive Evasion should become an innate property of the class, not a trait, and they should also consider allowing all weapons to use the Scepter’s “clone after X attacks” power.

The Dreamweaver Mesmer should be a completely separate specialization aimed towards bringing the enemy’s greatest nightmares to life. They should have a pool of possible phantasm choices on the F1-F4 keys geared around punishment, just like the hexes of GW1. Along with phantams that maintain constant effects, the dreamweaver should have utilities that let them manipulate these illusions to skillfully navigate the environment. For example, a utility that grants all your phantasms distortion for a few seconds would allow well timed counters to huge boss AoEs, and the power to destroy all your phantasms and resummon them on a new target would make life so much simpler.

Along with the Chronomancer, we should eventually see other specializations geared directly towards other classic playstyles. Interrupts deserve their own specialization, for example, geared towards dazing, stunning, boon stealing, and every other form of stopping the enemy in their tracks and stealing their precious energy to fuel your own spells.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

Zarathustra.1458:

Chaos Archangel.5071:

Dude.. I know its fun to look for reasons to rage but.. This is good news.

Combined with the defiance change, all we’ve seen are things looking up for Mesmer.

Chaos you show a little to much faith… I myself though, have my dreams, of a time where mesmer in a control orientated build has a life outside of PVP

Its not faith, its fact.

We’ve heard nothing but potential good news for Mesmer in the upcoming patch. Taking the quote “Mesmers specialization is gonna change PvP” and turning it into a QQ thread seems really out there to me.

So far we’ve heard of a potential for burst builds outside of PvP, a defiance change to bosses that looks pretty beneficial for us (and may possibly make Power Block not so terrible), and now word that our specialization is intended to be pretty impactful in PvP.

The only cause for worry is the already-established lack of faith in the devs, but not the good news we’ve been receiving.

Chaos, I love your optimism and I hate to do this to you, but here we go.

I’m going to quote one of your posts. It’s actually the OP of a thread called Power Lock & the “Pure Lockdown” Mesmer. It’s dated March 24th, 2014.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

So, apparently, the devs do pay attention to our class forums. I’m like 90% positive that the lockdown buffs we’re seeing are a direct result of the lockdown mesmer initiative we’ve started here in the Mesmer subforum….

…I wanted to take a look at the exciting new Domination trait Power Lock and how it’ll affect the Lockdown Mesmer in the future. …

…Whatever the case, it’s likely April 15th will see a surge in new fresh-faced lockdown Mesmer.

Ok, now we’ll fastforward precisely 24 days. You created another post, this one was called [To Devs] Save Power Block!. It was made on April 17th, 2014.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

Please don’t leave us with another useless trait…

We know how this one turned out.

This is why when Anet says ‘Mesmer changes are going to be awesome and shake up the PvP landscape!’, I say ‘I don’t believe you.’ Time and time again we’ve been excited only to have a fast one pulled on us and have cool stuff ruined. This is why literally anything Anet does will be viewed as a hostile action towards mesmers unless absolutely proven otherwise. Why so many of us are pessimistic about this expansion, and why we really doubt that mesmer is truly going to get anything good with it. At this point, based on what I know, I’m definitely seeing the expansion to be a one-and-done type of deal that I play through and quit again because mesmer got nothing.

Here’s mine

http://i.imgur.com/Rt4tWCy.jpg

If not for Mesmer, this game would be trash.

Simple as that.

This last paragraph is precious xD

Allison The Strange.4519:

If you can’t play mesmer effectively its your fault.

So since there’s great mesmers that can play mesmer effectively, we’d obviously find them in high level pvp, right?

Allison The Strange.4519:

As to why its not found in most high end teams is simple; it requires too much teamwork, support, and has next to zero chance at surviving fights if trying to stay on point.

Oh, ok. So what you’re saying is that even if you’re fantastic at mesmer, you’ll still suck in high end PvP…but it’s your fault. Got it.

Levetty.1279:

They really do hate Mesmers.

I don’t think its even hate. At this point – they just have no idea what to do with our class or even how to properly play it. For example, if you check out our grandmaster traits that we received, they are an absolute kitten

WTS finals, 20 players, all classes represented…. except Mesmer. This thread has never been more relevant.

Part 2

Edity bit:

BUGS! Mesmer is unbelievably buggy. We’ve suffered from more extensive and disruptive bugs than any other class in the game. This is in part due to the fact that the devs don’t play/understand the class, and so don’t notice when things go wrong, and partly -redacted to avoid infractions-. Some big ones include

• They recently broke clone offhands again. They started broken, got fixed after a year of complaining, aaaaaand it’s gone again
• Some of our skills still don’t do the proper damage, particularly after tweaks to change how the damage functions
• Some of our traits don’t interact properly with each other. It took years to get masterful reflection working with blurred inscriptions. It’ll probably take another year to get TD working with it.
• Afaik, several of the cd traits still have wonky interactions with our counter-attack spells. This results in decreasing effectiveness based on how you actually use them, which is pretty awful
• They introduced a fun bug that basically makes harmonious mantras pointless to run in open world PvE where persistent trait effects are stripped from your character if you change level
• There’s still an incredibly annoying bug where sometimes a long cd skill like portal will have its cooldown copied onto other utilities for no good reason.
• Something happened to mimic, doesn’t seem to work anymore
• Bounce logic on iMage is still very wonky, and is part of the reason it’s so awful

The final insult is that mesmers have lacked a good ranged mainhand power weapon since the beginning of the game. We’ve been nearly unanimously asking for mainhand pistol literally since the beginning of the game. When finally after years of asking, anet releases new weapons….we get shield. Another defensive offhand. Another defensive offhand to be tossed into the pile of other offhands that we already have floating around and have less than no need for. It’s basically anet thumbing their noses and taunting us with how close we could be to being a viable and interesting class, but never actually letting us obtain it.

Right, that got a bit longer than I anticipated. I’ve got plenty more gripes that I haven’t put down here, as many people on this forum could probably tell you. I’ve been known as the most cynical person with regards to anet balancing and content decisions for quite some time now. I hope this little list is sufficient to show you how absolutely not pleased I am with the current state of mesmer in this game.

Rome.7124:

it’s tough to believe you are not fine with class as is right now, because you do vocally calling people wrong and / or discredit other people’s complaints.

So, I’d love to see your list of what YOU are not happy about, because from the posts I’ve seen you made, you sure sound like you are perfectly fine with the current state of the Mesmer class.

Let’s see…

The scepter autoattack is absolutely awful. They slapped a half-hearted bandaid onto it and called it a job well done. It needs a total rework, many ideas have been given, they’ve ignored everything. It’s an absolute disgrace.

The iMage is the worst phantasm in the game. It’s been the worst for a very very long time. We’ve been asking for a rework to make it non-awful for ages and haven’t gotten anything. They recently buffed completely random numbers on it in the hope that we’d just shut up and stop complaining, but since they don’t actually understand our class at all, the numbers were the wrong numbers and it’s still awful.

The mainhand sword is still a shadow of what it used to be before being hit with countless nerfs. It used to be a fantastic utility and damage weapon. Then, blurred frenzy was hit with a double-nerf in one patch. A year or so later, iLeap was effectively deleted from the weapon. iLeap is still awful compared to its old utility, even with the teleporting implemented. You can’t use it to break stuns, can’t use it for mobility, you can just spam 3 twice and hope that the animation lock lets you swap before it gets killed by random aoe.

The new grandmaster traits that were released were, and are, an absolute farce. Disruptors sustainment and bountiful dissilusionment are both indescribably awful traits. The simple fact that multiple people at anet must have said ‘yes, this is a good idea. Let’s do it!’ is incredibly disheartening. The fact that they’re still wasting spots in our trait trees that could be taken up by something other than trash code is even worse.

Power block is arguably in an even sadder state than those other two traits. On release, power block was a strong and interesting trait that instantly created a really great style of mesmer play that hadn’t truly been seen since GW1. Unfortunately, the devs immediately decided that that was a mistake, and nerfed it into a state that’s just as functionally awful as disruptors sustainment or BD. The fact that it was almost a fantastic addition to our class before being snatched out from under us is just flat out insulting.

Overnerfing traits has been a theme for a long time with anet’s relationship to mesmer.

Blinding Befuddlement was turned from a really handy trait that added utility and damage in a lot of interesting ways into something that is once again, just useless scrap code in their database. They both nerfed it with a massive ICD and lowered the duration. It’s now not in a usable state.

The dissipation traits were slammed in a single nerf-ridden patch. Not only were they made blockable, dodgeable, and blindable in one patch, they also severely nerfed the strength of the bleeds that debilitating dissipation applies. These traits at least are still very viable, just the amount of nerfing that occurred in that one patch was patently absurd.

A long time ago, I made a build that functioned around a particular minor trait: vengeful images. This caused phantasms to have retaliation, allowing you to do some really interesting things by combining the damage transfer on the pDefender with high retaliation uptime. You can look it up if you want, it’s called the Immortal build. Unfortunately, anet decided to take what was an interesting trait and fun build and delete it from the game in a single patch. The trait was nerfed to providing 5 seconds of retaliation on summon, and it’s now once again just a useless scrap of code cluttering up their database.

Mesmers still have absolutely abysmal options for aoe anything. Compared to so many other classes, we have no aoe control, no aoe damage, and little aoe support. Literally the only handy things we have are portal and veil for large-group support. This makes obtaining loot, dealing damage, and generally being useful in other ways than as a veilbot in WvW an immense struggle that nobody has actually solved yet. This is a complaint that’s been getting aired since the beginning of the game, and in that time anet has made 1 or 2 half-hearted efforts to improve the situation.

The mesmer signets remain some of the worst designed signets in the game. There are incredibly few builds that actually utilize signets as signets; for both the active and passive effects. Additionally, the signet traits are scattered and disjointed, causing the creation of any build relying on signets to be haphazard and incredibly forced.

You know, sometimes I think we mesmer players must be insane, we keep doing the same thing, always expecting a different result.. Either that or the balance team is… I mean surely, giving bug fixes to mesmers and expecting us to be happy everytime, even when those bugfixes typically weaken us in the meta has got to be getting old for them…

On topic though, all I really want is a main hand ranged weapon that is not tied to conditions, and that has a short cooldown short duration daze to help us proc our interrupt traits more reliably. Is that really to much to ask for? I seriously have come to rely terribly on offhand sword just to have a daze up when I need it.

Zarathustra.1458:

Oh and fay, you mention balance, and mesmer, you should know by now that it is likely they have done no work whatsoever on mesmer yet, and we are simply an afterthought at this point.

Oh, I didn’t say the balance would be quality, just that the balance team has put a lot of manhours into it, doing undoubtedly productive things like figuring out how best to make sure the new content they add will be worthless for us.

Sorry man, as much as I’m totally behind the sentiment here…it’s not going to happen. I’m sure anet has been working on shield skills/balance for quite some time, which is why they actually released the mesmer using the shield in that teaser video. There’s not a chance that it’s going to change at this point in development. We’re just going to have to play with the hand of kitten that anet has decided to deal us time and time again.

I remember one year ago when I asked people if imbued should be standard and the only answer I got was “No, it would be OP”. Its interesting to see how that opinion has changed over one year. It seems everyone wants diversion to be aoe now (I would love it personally).

Fay.2357:

Look at me with a straight face and tell me that you actually believe the iMage buffs were impactful in any way and made the iMage anything other than still trash occupying the 5 slot on torch.

Hey now, my iMage can almost reach those slow-moving dolyaks in WvW now. Last time when I cast it right nearby, it even got a hit in before it moved out of range and the mage started running up to it and throwing a bolt just barely in its range, then the dolyak moving out of range in the time it took the projectile to reach it. That’s… something?

Chaos Archangel.5071:

- Equipping Shield could alter mainhand abilities:

I view this as incredibly unlikely. It would be such an enormous change and a really dangerous precedent to set in terms of future development being immensely complicated. I’d actually recommend against the possibility of doing that.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

- 3 extra utilities:

This is a possibility…but I wouldn’t like it. We already have too many utilities that we want to slot at the same time. 3 extra ones is just going to give us more reasons to wish we had more utility slots…but no more utility slots to use.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

- Possibility of a revamped class mechanic:

I actually think that some sort of modification here is the most likely thing…purely by process of elimination. It’s the only viable option. Unfortunately, there’s almost zero chance of this being worthwhile enough to replace a mainhand weapon.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

- No NEW weapon doesn’t mean … Could HoT introduce offhands as mainhands? They specifically say that each class is getting only one new weapon, but they did not say whats happening with our older weapons.

C’mon, this is one titanic stretch and you know it.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

What do you think this “something just as good” could be?

I think it’s Jon Peters extemporizing on the spot to prevent from having to explain awful design decisions to people that actually have knowledge of game mechanics.

My list of additional possibilities:

• We could get 4-5 shield skills we can swap like utilities. (so we get 2 at a time)
• We could just get a shield with 2 skills but also a change to our class mechanic (the phantasms) so that we end up having 2 new and 10/11(with downed state) phantasms reworked to something “different” (crossing fingers for hexes)
• Maybe we get a mechanic to choose between a power and condition version for our main hands
• It could also be a: dev:“hey you get something interesting” – mesmers:“woooh nice” → release of disruptors sustainment.

As a new player that was very helpful, thank you. I might have to watch it a few times, but it at least has helped me to understand as a newb necro where to stand and what my focus should be. I’m not 80 yet and it will be some time before I get ready for World vs World, but I’m excited to try it. It looks like a lot of fun.

Zarathustra.1458:

I was doing the math, we are in desperate need of a new mainhand weapon.

This is true, and anyone that plays mesmer knows it. Unfortunately, the Anet devs don’t play mesmer, and didn’t get the memo. We’re getting shield with HoT, and nothing’s going to change that at this point. Chalk it up to some combination of gross incompetence and willful ignorance.