Guild Wars 2

Sebrent.3625:

Just doesn’t feel like a good way to try to make this weapon more viable.

Torch is already one of the better and more popular offhands, despite having absolute trash in the phantasm slot.

I was figuring a 3s Reveal on each hit.

Figuring “uptime” like this is distorted because, well, what really matters is how long you can deny stealth — and, against thieves and mesmers and LB rangers (if this even matters against LB rangers), it’s usually only a matter of denying stealth long enough to burst/focus effectively.

10s on a long-ish cooldown is plenty when all you really want is to finish the fight in 10s anyway.

Sebrent.3625:

Pyro-Fay is quite right as well that any phantasm whose attack reveals would likely be OP … we’re not talking about long cooldowns between attacks. You’d likely have perma-revealed. Throw in the Signet to reset Phantasm cooldowns and you’d almost definitely have perma-revealed.

I imagine if you’re a thief and a mesmer is popping their heal just to get a clunky facsimile of Sic ‘Em, either you’re no threat or they’re dead meat.

You do seem to spend a lot of time just fighting NPCs kinda aimlessly, to be honest.

They could also just speed up the projectile a tad, maybe adjust the damage values a bit.

Some people like to command. It makes them feel important (sometimes for good reason, sometimes not). Even leading a ktrain around can be a big ego-boost. And folks get real defensive about their egos.

Ross Biddle.2367:

I’ve all but abandoned my mes in large scale. It’s just more rewarding playing the zerk staff ele.

Well, large scale is such a horrific laggy mess right now that I try my kitten dest not to contribute to it at all.

(In all seriousness, though, I’ve found a niche I like in WvW, and that’s a ranged-heavy havoc team. We also provide fire support in ZvZ, picking off anyone who’s out of position. So I basically get to enjoy every aspect of WvW running a dirty havoc build.)

StickerHappy.8052:

Why are they hopping like scarecrows? Lol

They are airplanes. Here, watch it with the sound and you’ll get it:
http://dulfy.net/2015/03/31/gw2-april-foolsairplane-mode/

Vikkela.7261:

Are you supposed to see enemy tags through walls like that at 8:33 and forward?

April thing bug.

Menaka.5092:

• Babysitting
• Thinking with portals in the new meta

Some quality work with Portals there.

It’s hard to tell without stepping through in slow motion, but Triumphant Distortion does seem to be helping quite a bit — pretty sure I saw one phantasm actually last long enough to attack twice?

I’m still not really sold on Restorative Mantras + Mantra of Pain, to be honest. In the videos, you spend a lot of time more than 360 away from any allies. How often were you actually getting group heals out of it?

There’s something else I noticed about your group’s tactics. Might be worth thinking about, might be superfluous… You all obviously focus fire on tag effectively, but when an enemy player is out of position and vulnerable, it often seems to turn into a 1-on-1 chase. Whereas I think ideally you’d see several people focus them down quickly so you don’t have to break off from the engagement so much yourself to pursue.

Can you imagine how annoying and random it’d make the mirror matchup, though?

Yeah, I can definitely see how the immob compensates for having your shatters dodged.

You play pretty well — your dodges, field placement, and use of stealth were more than good enough to outplay your opponents — but I think the build’s holding you back some.

One of the best things about MtD is that it makes every shatter skill hit hard (2x Torment plus 1x Confusion on top of whatever the baseline effect of the shatter skill is) — this makes it practical to double-shatter in rapid succession, which you can use to make up for dodged shatters or overload people with decent condition removal. In contrast, I saw a lot of times when you had shatter skills available but nothing to shatter — you still have a reasonably nasty burst, but you spend a lot of time just kiting and hiding between condi-bursts to set up another one.

Sword damage is very low. IIRC, at one point I saw you Blurred Frenzy into a glassy dude and only put out like 900 damage. It seems like the main value of Sword was tanking stuff with Blurred Frenzy and forcing ranged peeps to run away from you because they do it reflexively and don’t notice how low the damage it.

Err, Frost. Doom Sigil (or double Doom Sigils) is pretty standard in MtD builds. And is a pretty excellent choice of sigil all-around.

Loved the airplane stuff at the end. And I love your aggressive playstyle in general.

Sometime, I’d like to see a “B-roll” video: screw-ups, glitches (I’ve had to play around a lag spike at least once each day this week :/ ), goofy stuff, &c.

Rhialto.8423:

Might figure out some other engi specs just so those tomes of knowledge don’t go to waste on him…

That jumpy rifle build looks pretty fun.

If you want gear you CAN salvage, I recommend PvP reward chests for weapons. Doesn’t take but a few matches to get a weapon chest. It’s good practice for reading the map state and small-scale fights, anyway.

BlackBeard.2873:

(but this took forever b/c the can’t be crit, regen, and are tanky)

I’m not sure how much armor turrets have, but even ~7k hp is huge if you can’t crit on it or apply conditions.

Three looks.
(Did I post the first one already? If so, oops.)

I adore practically everything about that second look, Miku. It’s rather unique, to boot. Well done!

I’ve taken a lot of breaks from this game. So, err, for reference, what was the change that brought turret engies into the solo-queue meta in the first place?

This is a tricky situation because, well, rage-quitting is bad, but having a teammate who doesn’t want to help anymore and just rages/trolls/sabotages for the rest of the game would be even worse.

Penalties for quitting deter folks who want to abuse the system by, say, quitting any time it looks like a match they’re in isn’t going to be a faceroll (to queue up for another match faster), but they won’t actually fix the situation in this screenshot.

Coulter.2315:

You will get the word “Interupt” appear but it will not stop their actions, this allows you to benefit from “on Interupt” traits BUT allows them to still use their downstate skills (imagine how easy it would be to get any stomp if this wasn’t the case).

Hmm. Pretty sure I’ve successfully interrupted Hammer Toss and a few others.

I just want a cannon and a pirate ship, really. Don’t care besides that.

Cannon > Skyhammer

Dawdler.8521:

T3 want to fight, get new guilds, get new bandwagoners, start winning i WvW.
T3 rise to T2, everyone go “omg they want to win?!” and get even more bandwagoners.
T3 become T1 and the circle of life begins again.

Err, the OP is trying to attract both allies and enemies to improve play in the bracket, not stack one server to push it up above the others.

I’m pretty sure dazes/stuns do interrupt downed enemies. Just don’t apply the effect afterward.

Depends on your build, really. At level 80, you have a lot of control over your stats via gear, so people specialize into Zerk builds, Condition Damage builds, &c.

Personally, I use:

• Greatsword – reliable ranged damage with good burst capability.
• Sword/Torch – between The Prestige and Blurred Frenzy, this set gives me a number of ways to avoid damage.
• Alternative set: Sword/Focus – for pulls using Temporal Curtain.

So, these days, a server really only matters for WvW. All the other stuff? Basically independent of servers. You can do PvE (both open-world and instanced content) and SPvP with anyone.

gwcurious.6382:

I want a server that does WVW, but not a bunch of elitists who are going to tell me what build to play!

This is really more based on which guild(s) you join than which server. Groups most likely to dictate builds are “GvG”/“fight” guilds who run a strict team setup. That’s because the goal of the guild is to field a consistent force, kinda like a sports team with very specific positions. There are many WvW guilds, even hardcore ones, who won’t really demand anything beyond “Don’t be a rallybot.”

I want to see this map also, because I really like the cannon (it’s much less obnoxious than Skyhammer).

I do feel like water combat in SPvP was removed for good reasons, though. One solution could be to make it a winter-themed map where the lagoon is frozen over. This’ll cost you some art time, but I think it’d make a pretty fun little map for Unranked with less effort than making a new one from scratch.

Saturn.6591:

Of course; and you would not only see teams with 3 turret engis in PvP, but teams with 5 of them. Terrible idea.

You could always lower turrets’ direct health to make up for their new AoE resistance.

Florgknight.1589:

Bad enough that I lose stealth because some random botting AI engi decides to randomly dodge roll while sitting under a turret now you want to nerf thief even more?

Do you realize how silly it is to complain about “random” dodge rolls when you’ve actively forced your opponent to do that by denying them all visual information about your movement and attacks?

“They just sorta guessed that maybe now was a good time to dodge, since they couldn’t actually, you know, see me at all.”

NO WAI! SO UNFAIR!

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

To be fair, being in stealth is an immunity to 53 skills in the game.
Here is a list, if you’re curious.

Ignore the Mesmer mantras, as after I made that post, they were changed to be AoE.

I’m not sure that list really says much at all. For example, while it’s true that you can’t activate Sic Em against an opponent currently in stealth, (in comparison to, say, potentially hit them with a totally blind-fired Hip Shot), Sic Em is obviously not at all a liability against stealth builds.

~

N.B. mesmers actually have more trouble hitting a stealthed target than rangers do. Can’t create phantasms (and existing ones don’t attack), can’t use Spatial Surge, gotta rely on other enemies present to hit with a lot of other skills.

And, once again, rangers get stealth. Against mesmers it’s basically guaranteed stealth if you just shoot your arrow at a clone or phantasm. :/

Zenith.7301:

P.S. Mindstab on greatsword is a joke. At the rate boons are farted out by most classes, removing 1 boon on a skill that does barely the same damage as an autoattack isn’t much.

Up it to two boons, then. Problem solved.

It’s still a pretty good skill in a pretty good weapon set (ever since they improved the radius).

Zarathustra.1458:

I would wager such a setup would have me running 6/2/6 rather than the standard 4/4/6, and would also probably see me using Power Block inspite of it’s weaknesses.

Naw, you’d be better off using traits for Shattered Concentration and Greatsword Training.

Because daze on Mind Stab would be pretty absurdly powerful and the main thing you’d want is to be able to use it more frequently, and rip stability so you can actually get it through.

(That’s not gonna happen without a Halting Strike nerf (like an ICD), though. And I think I’d much rather they just keep Halting Strike. It’s a good, and fun, and worthwhile trait.)

I really don’t think “nuke the treb quickly” is, like, a big advantage anyone needs to worry about.

~

WTB staff ele can walk into the Skyhammer control room and blow up that stupid cannon for the rest of the match.

Thanks, folks! Lots of good answers. I picked the one that seemed to most closely sum up the overall consensus.

So, uh, what’s your proposed solution?

If the group I’m with is done for the night and logs out of WvW and there’s no queue of replacements, should the game kick out ten players from both our enemy servers to keep the match “fair” or whatever?

So, I guess what I should ask is: what does a typical “terrormancer” burst rotation look like? (How quick, how much damage, which conditions?)

Hey. Just something I’ve been wondering based on playing against necromancers in SPvP, but not having experience running one myself.

Sometimes when I engage a necromancer, he or she will use fear to make me run away.
Then pop it again.
And again.

And, well, most times I’ll break out of it, expecting a burst. But sometimes I can’t or won’t bother, and… It doesn’t seem to make a big difference, I guess? I guess I’m usually down 3-4k hp from the whole deal, but it seems like they’ve burned a lot of cooldowns to do damage equivalent to a few autos without really piling anything else on top of all that.

So, uh, what’s supposed to happen? Is chaining fear at the start of a fight just bad technique in general, or a good trick that doesn’t do much against my build (usually, interrupt mesmer with a lot of condition clears), or is there an upside to this opening I’m not seeing?

Ithilwen.1529:

If by “subtle” you mean “works occasionally in specific circumstances” perhaps. I doubt that it is an oversight. Power Block was introduced then almost immediately nerfed.

It was emergency-nerfed because it affected auto-attacks and rezzing, and then, as best we can tell, never looked at again.

Which, if you’ve played the class at all or looked at patch notes carefully, is basically the story of why lots and lots of mesmer abilities just don’t do much at all for long stretches of time. (At least the devs were super-quick to fix Diversion when it was accidentally replaced with a “Blur” effect. I appreciate that.)

Ithilwen.1529:

I think it’s deliberate and appropriate. A power blocked thief would almost certainly die rapidly without a reasonable chance to defend herself.

What’s the worst case here, really? Can’t use C&D or BP+HS? Good thing you have all those other skills! Which usually includes two shadow steps and two other stealth skills.

Or is it Heartseeker or Infiltrator’s Strike being interrupted? Okay, oh no, you’ll have to use autos for pressure, maybe even use a cooldown to stay perpetually in melee range. Quel dommage!

And if it’s Flanking Strike getting interrupted through its evade frames, give that mesmer a medal! They deserve to roll you. (They likely won’t without quite a fight, though, because you still have access to everything else on your bar.)

This is all on top of the fact that you can use Consume Plasma to completely “cover” any super-vital skill you want to make interrupt-proof.

Ithilwen.1529:

Back to the topic. What I see is one player with one build complaining that specific build doesn’t work well against thieves.

… That it doesn’t work well at all for a silly reason based on a trait being implemented wrong, patches ASAP, and then never looked at again.

CI builds are, in almost all ways, stronger than thieves than a Fixed PB would be. But this is an annoying oversight that pretty much kills one of the more subtle and interesting interrupt builds potentially available to mesmers.

Plus, Revenants are coming. With zero-cooldown utilities. So all these problems are gonna get worse.

Page 1:
“How do I kill mesmers?”
“Press 2. It’s next to 1.”

Page 2:
“They have stealth. That seems unfair.”
“Press 3. It’s next to 2.”

Looking forward to page 3.

Places that are pretty bad for dueling:

• On a road that yaks travel.
• Next to a sentry (see above).
• Next to a bloodlust spot.
• Somewhere folks tend to build siege.
• Real close to a camp that’s getting flipped often whenever both “invader” servers are putting any real numbers on a map.

So, basically, if you’re dueling north of south camp you should expect to get interrupt A LOT.

Sagat.3285:

Other classes don’t have to go zerker that’s the point

Uhhhh, mesmers.

“Fix DE first.”
That’s an entire profession mechanic overhaul. Good luck getting that to happen anytime soon. Moreover, I honestly don’t think getting rid of the dependence on DE will have the effect folks think it will. We can go into that in another thread, though.

“Add a cooldown to DE.”
As Lavra said upthread, “It’s called endurance.” Also, there are cooldowns on shatter skills. Also, burning all your dodges to make clones is a great way to get killed.

“Thieves should counter other zerk classes.”
If they “counter” them so hard they push them out of the meta entirely, that’s busted. There’s no way that’s a core principle of SPvP balance for the team. If a thief wants to steamroll another zerk character, they should maybe put half a second of thought into how they engage? And if they can’t or won’t, welp, why is it wrong that they’ll actually have a fair fight on their hands?
Also, a mesmer taking Power Block obviously isn’t rolling a pure-burst shatter spec. Being able to force a glassy aggressive character to stop spamming for a few seconds in a team fight is a perfectly fine role for an interrupt mesmer. What else is Power Block for in the first place, really?

And, again: put the framework into place now so it’s there to deal with Revenant skills once HoT comes out.

Drakortha.6974:

My main problem doesn’t lie with invisibility itself but the untargeting it does. The big advantage THEY have, is they have the luxury of keeping me targeted throughout an entire fight.

Right next to your #2 Longbow skill, which deals massive damage to glassy characters and has a channel that tracks through stealth is…

Hunter’s Shot.
Which puts you in stealth.
You.
You get stealth!

Also, two slots away from that is a skill that puts down a 360-radius DoT. This’ll give you something to do when your target is hiding.

To address some popular but arguments…

“But just think about all the initiative you lose when you get interrupted already!”
1. Not always.
2. You have stealth utilities, too!
3. Therefore, you don’t need gobs of initiative to stealth (or to burst), really.
4. Not every thief is playing a Backstab build with poor overall initiative management.
5. Srsly, how many Backstabs do you need to kill a dude.

“But thieves were designed without cooldowns!”
1. This game is going through a slow but constant process of revision and expansion. Remember when they gave each trait line a new GM skill? Power Block was actually one of those skills.
2. You know what’s great about forcing a cooldown on one — ONE — of your weapon skills? You’ll have to play differently.
3. Don’t you… want to play differently? Sometimes? Doesn’t adapting to your opponents sound, I dunno, maybe kinda fun?
4. Thanks to multiple shadow steps, multiple sources of stealth, and great damage output from just regular autos, thief skills already have enough redundancy to allow you to compensate for losing one for a short while. Thieves are resourceful like that.
5. If you’ve spent — YEARS! — rapidly tapping the same combination of keys to gank folks, and now you’re really worried that 2% of your victims who outplay you might force you to play slightly differently for five seconds… Uh, maybe this’ll be the swift kick in the pants you need to learn how to truly adapt.
6. If it turns out that you, personally, are rather stuck in your ways and abjectly can’t play around having a skill Power Blocked, good news! You can just Consume some dang Plasma.

Seriously, though, Sic ‘Em is a pretty good skill and it absolutely SHREDS stealth users if you wait a bit to make sure they’re low on dodges / poorly positioned.

Also the pet buff is pretty significant so it’s not a total waste even if your don’t face people you want Revealed.

Here, look:
Target drops due to stealth.
Count to three.
Click on the new one that appears. Or tab through until you see the one that has any boons on it, or the one who actually moves laterally or dodges or whatever. (Yeah, yeah, it’s sometimes annoying, I know. Welcome to GW2. They’re not gonna change this because there’s an entire profession designed around it.)
Burst.

Or just use Sic ‘Em and burst while they’re revealed.

“How can I sustain damage?” You don’t need to. Your opponent is made of paper and a single Rapid Shot burns like half their health!

Have a bucket of protips:
You don’t actually have to kill the clones. Just dodge when they all run at you.
Phantasms look like ghosts. You may or may not want to kill them, but that’s easy.
The real mesmer is the one who actually moves like a human player.
Sic ‘Em is a pretty good skill.
Entangle is a pretty good skill, even if it doesn’t seem that way to you right now.
Have you tried, like, just Rapid-Shotting the mesmer?