Guild Wars 2

None.

Probably still trying to level one up and figure out how it actually works after the might to phantasms fiasco.

I pretty much gave up on the wvw game mode earlier this week. I can’t get into many maps and roaming isn’t fun anymore, just 50 man blobs chasing one guy, clueless tags, vampire pvers, toxic team chat (on all accounts), and lag preventing game play.

Like magnuzone, I have work and housing projects to do. This game use to be a nice break from all of that but it’s too frustrating to support and play.

Lost themselves a dedicated 4+ year wvw player in me.

Meta is cool. Like to play as guardian and use ts for coordination with commanders. Yeah, it is fun and competitive team play. Something that GW2 lacking a lot.

Queues are over the top. EotM designed around queues in WvW kinda ignored, there is no real point even to exercise there as commander right now. (do not say that queues will be ok in month or so, that is the same as say that WvW will be dead in a month or so)

So you get in the game mode after 1-2 hours of queue. (if you are not a boy without a job and life and play in prime time) And… every fight of 120-150+ people is skill lag cluster frack. Common 250 people on map in 2017 and we have this.

Why we even then have this queues, if servers isn’t holding anyway. Just let everyone in and disable all skills except 1.

You mean a build that uses every skill on its bar that requires setting up a huge combo that has multiple activations that can be dodged if you know he is around? It’s no different than a Full zerker Signet Thief. It’s not anone shot it’s a High Burst combo, and the only time it has More stealth than a Thief is if you don’t run D/P.

And this is great since D/P Thief and Staff Thief shut down power shatter Mesmer as a Hardcounter
/thread

After reading the balance patchnotes:

Class A: Gets a needed nerf, PvP only
Class A: Gets a buff to compensate the nerf. NOT PVP ONLY

Class B: Repeat.

Like what the actual hedge? What do you think we do in WvW? (except for german servers)? PvE? No, its mass PvP. Thanks for making it worse every. kitten . time.

Recently, I was asked if saving a keep was worthwhile compared to just flipping it back. I did some math and totally botched it so I decided to do it better. Figured I’d share.

As a baseline, I’ll calculate the number of points your server misses out on while a T0 structure upgrades back to T3 assuming perfect Yak survival and camp holding. The formula is as follows:

(Upgrade Time in Minutes / 5) x ((20/140)x(T3-T0) + (40/140)x(T3-T1) + (80/140)x(T3-T2))

Where T0…T3 is the point value of the structure at that tier.

ABL
Garrison – 180 points
Hills – 176 points
Bay – 132 points
NET – 411 points
NWT – 461 points
SET – 102 points
SWT – 112 points

DBL
Rampart – 149 points
Airkeep – 246 points
Firekeep – 208 points
NET – 180 points
NWT – 176 points
SET – 118 points
SWT – 118 points

Naturally, if a camp flips or a Yak is slapped, the number of lost points rises dramatically.

This means that even with PPK enabled, dying to save a keep is worth it with tiered scoring so long as they don’t get hundreds more kills than you. In the previous system where all upgrades gave the same amount, there was no direct benefit in giving your life for the cause. You would retain the extra defenses, but that’s all.

The data can be found, along with upgrade times, here:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1AvuefUnzOVLcp1c44-KHu6q9iXgKlkzMfLMOo7a2IwY/edit?usp=sharing

I’m not trying to solve all of the world’s problems here. There was some uncertainty about whether a certain action was worth it with respect to points. I put together a little information to help people answer that question. That’s all~

Well of Precognition: The casting time of this skill has been reduced from 0.75 seconds to 0.5 seconds.

we rly did it
finally fixed it
impressive
well thought out process
amaze

/never forget Smiter’s Boon 2006-2008

It’s a good video, unfortunately the basic message is “use terrain exploits to deal with this broken class”.

Ridiculous how thieves get in offhand pistol what mesmer needs to sacrifice a utility slot for to interrupt, and their interrupt is not only more spammable, but it has a built in power block that does metric tons of damage.

Hey everyone. I´m Flux and here is my new pretty comprehensive guide video.

I see a lot of ppl having difficulties vs thieves as a power mesmer and a video like this was reguested from me a several times. I really hope this guide helps some ppl to deal with thieves better.

For me it was actually pretty hard guide to make cos fighting thieves is a lot about knowing how they play and like to do stuff. Predicting is a big part when fighting them. There is still a lot of tricks what you can do and you can find them from the guide.

I know that power mesmer is not very popular choise right now but some ppl still play it and maybe in the future if we get buffs this guide will help a lot more new and experiensed players.

Tell me what you think.

I can verify this in SPVP and WvW.

This can be done at range and the exact culprit of this is deathly chill with earth/ice sigils in combination with a high precision build, bleed on crit traits, and Necromancer axe 2.

Right now there isn’t too much of a defense on this outside of berserker stance resistance on warrior or diamond skin/immortal WET tempest. Due to how rapidly the bleeds stack, you can easily one shot someone who doesn’t have a full clear.

While I see this as less problematic in WvW (necros can’t really escape and are committed to fights), in SPVP is a massive issue due to having to fight them on point.

Necromancer is very powerful in SPVP right now running the Procmancer Axe build because they can instant kill you with three skills: Axe 2, Scythe 5, and Scythe 2. If you get hit by any of these during a CC or without a clear your dead beyond dead.

I would rate this worst than warrior arc divider spam. Warriors are at least more predicatable, because when they rage you know you need to pop CDs or die (this is also problematic because warrior rage mode is pretty much a free capture point steal due to how much of the circle arc divide covers). With Axe 2, its so hard to see coming.

I agree that Chilling Death is really bad right now, but only in this combination. I mean Scythe 2 and 5 can also stack 25 bleeds but at least you can predict them and a good mesmer/engineer should moa shrouded reapers in a team fight.

It’s really frustrating to be fighting a necromancer then have him do some ranged sign language with his axe that has no projectile animation to stack 25 bleed you and instantly end the fight.

linkings system kill AG, problem solved

msalakka.4653:

I personally mostly enjoy dropping in sarcastic remarks, for which the MLA format is fairly useless.

I mainly use sarcasm to compensate for my lack of wit.

But yes. This isn’t no mla!

Yay a post that ANET actually read well fix this condi mess you have made in WvW give us something for our money and stop giving us Gem stuff in the store. Do something for WvW balance it for one something for all WvWers . Dont care about borderlands give us something to alleviate our pain>

Swamurabi.7890:

I wish I could have changed my votes.

Its funny, isnt it?

Some of us knew this was coming and voted to delete DBL outright. It was harsh and definitive, yes, but it was the only choice at the time that made sense in order to maintain WvW stability. DBL wasnt good for WvW.

Yet people went on and on and on about how Anet wouldnt support WvW anymore if it wsnt there, that there would be no new maps period… and that a vote for DBL meant new maps was likely. So people flocked to that choice.

Hah!

At least we managed to avoid complete WvW meltdown with the second poll, sigh.

We nearly killed WvW and it was our own fault.

My biggest complaint is that Rangers still can’t wield 2 longbows

DBL is great, I can go there and never see anyone. Flip empty camps, sentries and what ever, never get contested.

Words cannot describe how awesome this map is for uninterrupted reward track completion, fight guilds are really missing out on this exceptional experience.

I feel like a GOD on DBL because I never die on that map, just burn off those carbs running from camp to camp.

This map has so much inspiration, that I started to craft a Braton Prime and Frost Prime Warframe after I gave up in Season 6 PvP matchmaking.

The changes that have been made have certainly made things better. Turning into a bird and being catapulted between shrines is fun and the inclusion of Borderlands bloodlust has given a purpose to the oasis area again. Although it does seem that the central map event has gone the way of the ABL orb event and won’t return at all – but it’s probably for the best.

Despite the improvements I still avoid the DBL because the time between engagements with enemy players is too long due in part to the vast geographical isolation of the map. Also, none of the objectives have any synergy because of this geographical isolation which makes conquering the map rather unsatisfying.

McKenna Berdrow.2759:

I’m aware of Tyler’s posts, which if you read them don’t ever promise a 3rd borderlands map. I just wanted to clarify that nowhere in the polls did we say anything about creating a 3rd borderlands map, even though that is stated as a ‘fact’ over and over again on the forums.

“if the community does not accept this map, we will not be making new maps for WvW.”

Community still doesnt accept this map so please remove it since no new map is being worked or will ever be worked on.

Dont remove Desert Borderlands is the best PvE map ive ever seen in this game, has a lot of potential, we just need a t-rex world boss in the middle and some mechanics with dinosaurs involved

i am serious

Players don’t like EBG over Alpine’s because it’s more complex.

EBG has more structures, they’re closer, it’s easy to get around like alpines, it’s got a lot of areas to have open fights or chokes for positional fights, and none of them felt stupid like when you get stuck on a plant on the ground(other than that step in north dredge), it’s got it’s central structure that constantly attracts fights from 3 sides. Both maps provide a much smoother experience in meeting your enemies, moving around, fighting, and counter play. That’s why players prefer it.

When you put in stuff to interrupt that experience like spacing out structures, high cliffs and tight passages, areas filled with obstacles, and then have to put in gimmicks to counter it, thus making the experience of meeting enemies, moving around, fighting and counter play much less enjoyable and annoying, obviously players will hate it more than love it.

Obviously with structures closer it’s harder for havoc teams to operate in EBG with faster response times and why it’s easier for “blobs” to exist there, and why smaller groups mostly sit in borderlands. Desert was built to try and break up the big groups, congratulations, it worked, can’t come in here to complain about less players when that was the purpose of the map, especially when the expansion also screwed over those small groups.

There’s a certain annoyance to desert borderland that probably won’t ever go away, even it’s theme alone can be an annoyance to players. No different than tangled depths, a lot of players hated that map even after the changes.

Based on complaints I’ve seen as recently as 2 seconds ago, some people have no clue about some of the changes that have been made to the map. Allow me to bring you all up to speed so that you can complain more accurately~

1.) Shrine effects are annoying because fire turrets, birds that blow you off of cliffs and invisible zergs.

-None of that stuff exists anymore. Instead, when you hold three shrines, you can essentially teleport from one shrine to another. At Airkeep, you transform into an eagle and fly to a new shrine. It’s exhilarating. I absolutely recommend trying it when you get the chance.

2.) It’s impossible to get anywhere without jumping off of a cliff.

-This was actually never true. You can get from any point to any other point by following a road that never goes near a cliff. There are also some cliffside roads that are totally optional. The only cliff you have to jump off of is in Rampart if you’re trying to leave to the south. Even then, it’s just a shortcut, but some stairs would be nice.

3.) Small groups can’t take big objectives.

-Not long after it came out, tier 2 and 3 Tower defenses were weakened to make them less impervious to small group attack. As for Keeps, you’re able to hit them without being as exposed as the day you were born, which offers ample opportunity for the creative havoc squad.

4.) Objectives reach tier 3 in 3 hours.

-This one is a bit tricky since objectives upgrade at different rates. North East tower is served by 2 Yaks with routes that take 3:57 and 3:54 to run. That’s roughly 2 Yaks every 4 minutes. It takes 140 Yaks to hit tier 3 so, if no Yaks or camps are hit and all sentries remain allied, it should take 280m. That means, unless Speedy Yaks are used, the minimum time to hit tier 3 for NET is 4 hours and 40m.

For Airkeep, it’s also served by 2 Yaks (note, on ABL side keeps are served by 3 Yaks). Their routes take 3:14 and ~2:10. The optimal time to tier 3 comes out to about 3 hours.

I don’t have exact times for SC Yaks atm, but I can say that for a south tower, time to tier 3 is even less than 3 hours. In general, the further south an objective is, the faster it upgrades. At the same time, it’s more vulnerable to enemy attack.

5.) It takes forever to run anywhere

-Again, this one is slightly tricky. Run times from Rampart WP to a side keep lord room are about 30% longer without shrines. With them, they’re about the same. Meanwhile, the time it takes to break into lord room from an enemy spawn is over 100% longer. Run times between north and south camps are almost identical to Alpine. Run times from enemy spawns to side keeps are longer. Run times from Rampart WP to a south camp are similar. Run times from SWT to Firekeep are much greater while SET to Airkeep are slightly larger. On top of that, DBL has an easy to get MS buff that allows any class greater mobility.

Still, when attempting to take shortcuts around Undercroft especially, it’s easy to get lost in the stairways if you aren’t familiar with the territory. You never have to go that way to get an optimal run time from one objective to another, though.

If there’s another change you feel is important, feel free to point it out. Otherwise, have fun~

I don’t main my mesmer anymore for the sole fact that Anet has no idea what they want mesmer to do anymore. It’s permanently stationed in the mists now. No point in playing pve with mesmer since it makes no sense to spam half my skillbar to kill 1 or 2 trash mobs when I can hop on my Ele and spam staff 2 every few seconds or go to my necro and spin in one of my poison fields for 16 aoe poison stacks just with 2 skills.

There is no good power build for mesmer. Best way is to run full stealth to get the HPs while using staff 3 phantasm to do actual damage on bosses based on other people’s conditions.

I’m sorry for the bad vibes but when a solo ranger pet is doing more physical damage than a mesmer and 3 phantasms something went wrong somewhere.

Gaile Gray.6029:

Vermillion.4061:

Most of the players in WvW are just upset that nothing has really happened in months and we feel like we’ve been ignored.

We just want to see what is actually going on behind the scenes with WvW, maybe given some DevBlog update style stuff since you’ve been mostly silent on what is changing and being worked on.

Different companies communicate in different ways and sometimes the process evolves over the years. Mike O’Brien explained how we choose to communicate in this forum post a few years ago. What he said was, “We’ve set a clear policy in the past year: we don’t talk speculatively about future development. We don’t want to string you along. Creating fun is an uncertain business: sometimes things work out and sometimes they don’t; sometimes we go back to the drawing board over and over before we get something right. If we make optimistic promises and then can’t deliver on them, everyone suffers. So when we attend a trade show or give an interview, we’re there to talk about what we’re getting ready to ship, not to speculate on what we might ship someday.”

I understand that some players would prefer a different manner of communication. I wanted to share the comments above to show that silence does not point to inaction or neglect or indifference.

I think people understand what decision was made about not talking about future software development until you have already worked on it. The problem is this is counter-intuitive to software design and industry standards.

I am the head of IT at my company and I could most definitely not ignore serious feedback about our services or product and then go radio silent until we were halfway done. This is a serious issue especially since the direction of development over the years has geared towards continuous integration, constant innovation and being proactive about communication with the product owners and/or client and getting constant feedback so that problems can be corrected early and often. Everything about the choice here is counter intuitive to actually addressing the problem. Precisely because you do not engage in enough back and forth feedback and make small iterative changes where you can quickly gain feedback and adjust what you’ve done to match the needs of the customer, you go long periods of time building what you guys think is the issue, then deploy it and half of it works and half of it does not. Then we get some minor input and then you go radio silent for another 6 months. Seems to just be an incredibly broken process and one IMO that should be re-evaluated.

Go ahead and make us up a few topics we’re allowed to talk about, Gaile.

Hey guys. I’ve spent the last couple of months playing a lot of large-scale WvW and GvG. It’s no secret that a lot of folks are frustrated right now and there’s a sense of pessimism through the community. In light of this, I just wanted to keep things positive and share some awesome things you can do with Mimic.

This is a frontline boonshare build, so if that’s not your thing I understand and you can read something else. But if you’re curious and want to dominate your enemies into submission learn more about the build I recommend paying a visit to the wiki and brushing up on skill mechanics and cooldowns.

Recommended Reading on the Wiki

Mimic
Signet of Inspiration
Illusionary Inspiration
Continuum Split

Just as a background for folks that might not be as familiar with the WvW scene, the majority of Mesmer builds you see out there tend to focus either on solo/small-scale roaming or large-scale utility for the zerg, e.g., “veil-bots”. Back when the specialization rework was released the summer before HoT, the introduction of Illusionary Inspiration opened the door for a viable third option, the frontline boonshare Mesmer. With HoT bringing the Chronomancer elite spec and the shield offhand, everything was in place for guilds to begin theorycrafting and implementing boonshare into their team compositions.

So here’s the build that we’ll be working with: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhAQNAseWl0nhq0YBawPNQtGLEHV9l+pl6ZFcBfmZAkALEA-T1xHQBwT9HwpPAgK/W3+DPUJY+eCAA4UAIKgMD-w

Chaos/Inspiration/Chrono is a fairly popular and forgiving trait setup. It doesn’t require the timings and group training that Domination/Inspiration/Chrono uses, and has a lower barrier to entry with respect to beginners and gearing.

Now, if you’ve been keeping up the patches, you know that Signet of Inspiration received a major overhaul fall 2016. They essentially changed certain boons from stacking in intensity to stacking in duration, effectively eliminating prebuffing and nerfing might/stability stacking. However, that same change buffed resistance and quickness application by letting the signet use the Mesmer’s boon duration. That’s huge.

The biggest shortcoming for Chaos boonshare has always been not doing enough. Your Signets have 30s cooldowns which means you’re designed to win the endurance race, not the fight that’s over in 20s after the first push. The addition of Mimic takes care of this weakness. It gives you the “burst sustain” your team needs to survive. When you factor in signet changes, one properly trained Mesmer now has the carry potential to win entire fights for his team. Let’s see how it’s done.

Video Tutorials and Gameplay

Skill Breakdown
Fast Version
Gameplay on NA
Gameplay on EU

So what’s going on here? I’m pumping out six casts of Signet of Inspiration to buff my team. In order to pull this off, you’ll want to start in sword then swap to staff for sigil proc. Activate continuum split during the after-cast of Warlock to get Illusionary Inspiration and the illusion for CS duration. Time Warp, signet, then Mimic. Your skills will reset after CS ends and you’ll still have Echo on your buff bar. Use your shatter skills during CS for Inspiring Distortion and boon generation. When you revert back, you should be able to finish your rotation without getting interrupted. Weapon swap for another sigil proc before casting the last two signets.

Illusion generation is paramount to having enough time to get through your rotation. Quickness helps a great deal, so make sure you’re shattering or opening with Tides of Time. In the middle of a zerg fight, it can be too risky to cast everything without getting cut off early. You can mitigate this with Distortion for the rift, leaving either signet or Mimic out of the rotation, using Phase Retreat for an extra illusion, or by simply not having terrible positioning.

Let me know what you guys think. Feedback appreciated!

Daredevil in general is broken in WvW.

3 dodges, a heal that restores those dodges on a low cd and heals the thief pretty much to full and unlike ether renewal from ele channel vigor has a short cast time.

Added to those dodges you have built in evades into several weaponskills, otherwise it’s blinds anyways, and all thief weapons were buffed to have autoattacks with the DPS being greater than a Gravedigger spamming reaper or a 100b Warrior.

Pair that with essentially 3 teleports and on demand kiting/disengage from shortbow, shadow step (which is also a double stun break and a condi clear in a single skill that can reset with improvisation trait steal).

Since they buffed auto thief don’t even rely on landing backstab/vault for damage pressure anymore anyways, so they can use that initiative on PI headshot spam.

Highest damage class with highest damage avoidance with highest mobility in game. At least a warrior has a 1 minute cd on his 2 mongoloid defenses, as similarly broken as warriors are.

And on top of that this broken game allows a thief to shadowstep stomp so he can teleport 1200 feet away for a guaranteed stomp when he teleports back.

A tunbreak that also blocks attacks AND knocks down, on a hilarious 15 sec cd. How in hell can you give someone a stunbreak+block+CC on a 15 sec cd is beyond me.

There’s a reason WvW is swarmed by packs of thieves.

OriOri.8724:

babazhook.6805:

See sigil of Revelation. If implemented in WvW issue solved.

1/4 sec reveal on a 240 radius, that also depends on weapon swap while in combat will no absolutely nothing to even begin to address this issue in WvW and you know it.

You really have a L2p issue and have no idea how this thief works. I can kill stealth stacking with this sigil.

First clue. The length of time revealed is immaterial.

Second clue. In WvW more then one person can use this sigil.

Third clue. A thief has a limited supply of initiative.