Guild Wars 2

Storm.1653:

Asp, with fewer clones you are doing less damage. If your using any form of shatter build,more clones =higher damage Period!

The core “quick shatter” combo is just you + Mirror Blade, though (dodging for another clone doesn’t help that much because you can also just be Mind-Stabbing in place during that time instead — the key thing here is time compression just as much as damage output, because the more you “drag it out” the more half the damage just goes nowhere because your opponent dodged).

You get up to +20% damage from HM without stacking Mantras too hard (averages out to more like +8% to +12%, probably).
You get a big packet of damage just from connecting Mirror Blade itself (this also benefits from HM).
Oftentimes your first shatter also includes a bonus Phantasmal Defender.

Put together, playing without DE is not nearly as big of a damage gap as I first thought it would be when I saw the new trait layout.

Storm.1653:

My biggest beef with mesmer is that they moved clone on dodge to a grand master and put it in the same line as 3 charge mantra. Any mesmer worth a pinch of salt would know 3 charge on the heal is highest per second and gives 6 condi clears with the minor. But man i can’t get used to playing with out clone on dodge so i have to take a sub-par heal and use an ability slot for clears. Is a total rip off !!

I was worried about this. Then I started shattering without DE. It’s pretty amazing anyway. You have fewer clones, yes, but Harmonious Mantras compensates for the damage output in other ways (with 2x stacking thanks to Mender’s Purity). There’s trade-offs to be made there, but either of those two traits can melt faces. I personally prefer HM, especially now that clone death isn’t a thing anyway (before going six points into Dueling would give you confusion-on-clone-death, IIRC).

bhagwad.4281:

But I’m afraid it’s really not just viable anymore. Anet has done a good job of making shatter so much stronger that phantasms are just pushed out of the equation. All the complaints you hear about mesmers on the forums are not directed towards our phantasms, but towards shatters.

Your problem is that you’re defining the idea of a build too narrowly.

What makes the current crop of “shatter” builds powerful isn’t that they’re stacking a pile of shatter traits. It’s that they can combine shatter bursts and CC, or shatter bursts and great stealth access, et cetera.

For example, you can do the same with a phantasm build that almost never shatters. Heck, you can take a Chaotic-Interruption-based build and play it as a phant build or a shatter build.

You just need to start from the position of “Any time I can do something and do it amazingly well, I should do that.” There aren’t gobs of traits for just standing there casting phantasms in this game because that’s not enough to hang a whole build on, just like “swap weapons a lot” isn’t in and of itself a concept for a complete warrior build.

More generally, this is the list of all the server community sites.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/community/lookingfor/Updated-List-of-Community-Websites/first

Mr Snotty Pants.3980:

Some trait lines are just poorly laid out, and with the new restrictions it’s much harder to work around that.

Mesmer traits were a mess and still are. Lots of adepts I want, few GMs. Old scheme you just spread out into 4 trait lines. New scheme isn’t so forgiving…

On a mesmer? :O I think you’re making some very wrong choices, then. Especially given that most of the new trait lines have both immense internal synergy and obvious cross-overs with other lines.

~

Mostly what I’m getting from threads like this one is that PvE (or at least the PvE meta?) must be terribly bland if y’all are labeling nearly any trait that involves actually doing something beyond executing a rotation as “useless.”

Gorani.7205:

My choice would be to work on points awarded, e.g. that towers on home BLs award less points per tick than on enemy BLs.

When you have a significant population advantage, it’s pretty easy to “lock down” your own BL and consistently hold at least your “natural” Bay/Hills in the enemy BLs.

So this sounds like a gimme to the overstacked server more than anything else.

vox.9027:

It’s not the damage or the kite that is absurd but the lack of counterplay to go up against a class that can instant cast stun you for 1.25s into their burst, from a relatively high stealth uptime included.

… Isn’t that just thieves with Basilisk Venom in a nutshell? (Especially now that it’s two activations.)

Honestly, my main observation is that your thief opponent is playing too skittish. Porting to 900-1200 away from you constantly is just an invitation for you to get free DPS while they waste initiative. Not saying this to diss you in any way. You’re dodging and bursting pretty well, as far as I can judge; it’s just hard to judge that much when you’re getting lots of opportunities to just freecast.

Warlock.7136:

want to try and fix it?

Enh, I’ll take a shot.

What did you try?

From your description, it’s not exactly clear what your old build was, besides Spiked Armor for retal. (You list “power and precision boosts from traits/trait lines” but my only barometer on what your traits were was the ones you don’t flag as “useless.”)

You complained about dying faster due to the damage bumps a few classes go. Did you consider Last Stand + Defy Pain? That gives you two useful “virtual” skills without having to spend slots of your skill bar. Automatic-triggering limited-duration damage immunity is a pretty good way to facetank more damage from bursty zerkers.

Moreover, you picked an entire trait line of useful buffs for swapping weapons and labeled them all “useless” because… you don’t intend to swap weapons? (There’s no role in your build for a weapon like mace, warhorn, longbow, or shield?) Just for Merciless Hammer? Maybe you should swap weapons more or not take Merciless Hammer? Nothing about the build you described demands 20% CD reduction on hammer skills or parking hammer full-time.

Engie and mesmer can both be very, very fun to play. The way their abilities “lock together” is very satisfying in a lot of ways. There’s a feeling of flow that’s kinda hard to describe but you really appreciate it if the class “clicks” for you. (Personally, I love mesmer but I can’t play engie for kittens.)

A lot of players just hoping on the power bandwagon probably aren’t in it for that. You can tell because not only is their execution poor, but they’re just sticking to one or two combos like they’re a mediocre thief or something. But, like, generally speaking, playing an engie or mez build with a lot going on? It’s exciting!

Warlock.7136:

the optimal build is not always the fun one as i have said before. meta is the gaming lobotomy. you drool on yourself and play the meta and it’s all “optimal mathmatic effeciency”.

The metagame right now is super loose. Lots of opportunities to experiment and find something that works.

Moreover, between trait consolidation, trait realignment, and new traits that fill missing niches, lots of stuff that was just garbage in the past is usable now. When the metagame shakes out, there’ll be a few “meta” builds for each profession (that’s how it always works), but those other builds will continually to be useful and fun. Because there are more good traits, because it’s (mostly) easier to get the right ones together, because quite a few profession-wide “must-haves” have been transformed into baseline features of the classes instead.

All in all, at the moment, the possibility space of builds that don’t suck is looking pretty good.

Warlock.7136:

or you break from what everyone else is doing and play something that you find enjoyable. that is no longer possible.

Sure it is. Plenty of awesome totally off-the-wall builds are available to your right now. Folks are messing around with Signet mesmers, Flamethrower engies, all kinds of weird stuff that was just universally rubbish before.

But, yes, you can no longer build 3/3/3/3/2/0 or try to stack retal on a mesmer. Quite a few do-nothing traits and newbie traps are gone, probably forever. Quel dommage!

I’m not sure how Confounding Suggestions is to blame for someone bursting you while you’re trying to rub a downed guy with Stability up.

I’m also not sure how the OP is getting hit so hard even while doing all the stuff they say they’re doing, though.

Man, this forum view bug is pretty awful.

Warlock.7136:

read other forum threads our mathimatician players out there did the math. there ARE less builds available to play, ALOT less.

There are fewer available combinations, in the rawest sense.

Most of the combinations we lost were, in all honesty, absolute trash. Do-nothing skills and do-nothing builds. There are very few exceptions to that… stuff like clone-death mesmers; and, enh, I really can’t say giving clone-death builds the axe hurt the game in any way.

SlimChance.6593:

Why??? Because everyone’s favorite BFF the Thief. How many posts have there been on Power Block and Thief’s initiative? Why should a single profession(possibly Revenant as well) have immunity to a GRANDMASTER trait?

Yes it was nice that Power Block now adds weakness, but it is still on “interrupt”. How often do you really “interrupt” a thief? And is weakness really GM worthy when you do? They just Consume Plasma twice and be right as rain.

Right now, if your going to duel a thief, would you pick “Power Block” as your GM?

Shouldn’t a GM be just as powerful and build defining no matter the enemy?

Power Block incorporates the old Halting Strike damage.

So it is, in fact, SRS BSNS even against thieves.

Even without CS/CI, a single good Power Block interrupt can totally turn a fight against a thief. It’s a great trait all around and pretty much the crown jewel of Domination (which is right, and proper, and don’t change that).

Necrotize.2974:

Except those “stealth troll mesmers” lost a huge amount of their condition application with the change to maim and the removal of Debilitating Dissipation, meaning the only reliable condition application that can be used while stealthed is Staff Clones, which will only apply a damaging condition 66% of the time. So the two greatest strengths of what many people considered a trollish build that should be the reason of PU being nerfed aren’t even issues or even in the game anymore. And I hate to say it, but if a mesmer is killing you with staff autoattacks and stealth, then maybe you need to reconsider your build, especially in this new rising condi meta(at least as long as burning is so strong and prevalent). Power mesmers running PU are a completely different beast. They also give up quite a bit to get that stealth. Dueling obviously can’t be dropped. Illusions is also fairly mandatory as it reduces clone/phantasm cds AND shatter cds as well as providing some might. That leaves usually Domination, which can provide an insane amount of vulnerability to a proper burst. So giving up anyone of those lines for stealth isn’t exactly an easy choice.

I don’t know why you were replying to me specifically, but I think you’re kinda wrong here.

For starters, most PU power shatter mesmers shouldn’t drop Domination. Illusions is by far the more expendable line, since the big perk that PU grants you is the ability to play a bit more of a waiting game to get an ideal shatter combo: the power of each individual burst is much more important than the 20% difference in cooldowns.

Condi-burst PU is still a real thing in WvW, where access to the Perplexity rune makes it pretty easy to pile loads of Torment and Confusion on your target. Properly built, you can drop a lot of conditions on a target and escape all day. It’s hardly a game-breaking spec but I’ve played with and against them to know that they can be played much more aggressively than just the slow-as-mud clone-death attrition PU style of old.

DJM.1450:

My builds used ALL aspects of the game as I expect most seasoned players did. From trait stats, mix/match armor/weapons/trinkets, food, infusions, runes, sigils, wvw buffs, etc. I enjoyed robbing stats from one to prop up another which seems no longer available since the June 23 patch. It has also add the need for more of the same stat weapons/trinkets/armor (more crafting, ugg).

The only thing that changed is that you don’t randomly pick up 300 points of Condition Damage in your Power build just because you wanted a particular GM trait.

Most people aren’t likely to need new gear, beyond maybe one changed trinket or something if they were really precisely fine-tuning their stats.

Leodon.1564:

Theres a big difference between a thief who specs to just hide/evade but does poor damage and a mesmer who does good damage from stealth.

Both thief and mesmer stealth builds don’t really require neutering your damage, beyond missing out on access to a couple of awesome traits/utilities. Stealth-troll thieves can go all-in on Power/Precision/Ferocity or Condition Damage just like stealth-troll mesmers can.

You interrupt them with MoD and then greatsword-shatter them to death. Try it. It’s really, really good.

Not every interrupt trait is for a kitten y never-shatter phant build.

• It’s three seconds of quickness every five seconds.
• Even three seconds of quickness once is great for a hyper-concentrated burst. Since you’re in Domination, you’ve got access to Confounding Suggestions, Power Block, and vulnerability-stacking all working to soften up your target for a big burst.
• Right now, there’s an interesting trade-off between Shattered Concentration and Furious Interruption. Furious Interruption is more of an “all-in”/“win-more” skill, while Shattered Concentration helps interrupting builds shore up a weakness (stability).

bhagwad.4281:

The big difference between thief stealth burst and mesmer stealth burst is range. When a thief is in stealth, I know he’s somewhere around me. My autoattacks have a chance to hit him, which makes it a bit more risky for him to stand around taking time to position. The mesmer’s stealth burst can be initiated from range which is one reason why it’s more difficult to counter.

A “proper” greatsword burst relies on being close to your target. You can still go 4-2-3 at range without it but that doesn’t hit nearly hard enough to one-shot anyone reliably. Mesmers can Blink in close, but that’s exactly the same as thieves using Steal.

“Mesmer players are, on average, more skilled” mostly reads like hollow back-patting.

To the extent that it is true at all, it’s just because there are fewer folks sticking with mesmers on the very low end. I run into plenty of straight-up mediocre mesmers in WvW and PvP, however (and, honestly, with the patch changes, they’re still mediocre — they hit harder now, closer to a glass ranger, but they’re just as easy to play around because they don’t use their abilities efficiently even by my pretty lazy standards).

Besetment.9187:

Am I going crazy or is Mirror Blade missing might stacks? I can never generate more than 6 might on bounce even when it generates 9 vulnerability on target.

No, that’s working correctly.

“Number of Bounces: 4”
Count them…
Initial: hits target (3 vuln.)
Bounce 1: bounces to you (3 might)
Bounce 2: hits target (6 vuln. total)
Bounce 3: bounces to you (6 might total)
Bounce 4: hits target (9 vuln. total)

Chukree.1756:

ASP.8093:

Playing a zerky character, I’m not dying any more than I was in the past.

Actually less so since Distortion is no longer garbage on non-IP builds (there was a conspicuous effect lag while waiting for the clones to shatter, before).

Because mesmers are OP now, and you didnt know how to play before (now you’re just op).

…

I wish you luck in all of your PvF endeavors.

CoraxRnR.5742:

6. The whole Inspiration line
Again, haven’t played with it. But I feel there might be something wrong if you’re able to spec into a relatively strong defensive/selfsustaining traitline and still do nearly as much damage as, for example, a Dom/Duel/Illu Shatter.
Proposed change: This time I’m totally gonna hold back because I don’t know kitten about playing with it.

This game is pretty much defined by stacking damage bonuses while relying on active defense, though. Nearly every “defensive/sustaining” spec outside of bunkers or some WvW frontline is focused on big damage as well.

Taking Inspiration typically means missing out on Chaos (PU and CI are both godly) or Illusions (cooldown reductions, area daze on shatter, condi goodies). You’re not getting all that condition-clearing for free.

~

If the sustain is too much, I think the best fix is to cut the base healing a bit in favor of better Healing Power scaling. HP’s been mostly a trash stat for ages. I don’t mind having to pay for sustain a bit (I won’t, personally, most likely, but I don’t mind it being more of a trade-off stat-wise).

Kelthien.8593:

Jury’s still out on Inspiration. Feels powerful on paper- lots of condi cleanse, group support. I have a hard time telling if I’m actually helping my team or if the randomness and small one-off numbers/cleanses are just getting lost in the noise of wvw battles. Is Healing Prism a super-star, or am I wasting a trait line to nullify 1/3 of an auto-attack’s damage every 10 seconds?

I think the trick with Inspiration is to play selfishly and aggressively.

Mender’s Purity lets you just eat a condi bomb that could kill someone else. Phantasmal Defender protects you from a burst. You get a lot of incidental value for your teammates as well, but as long as you draw lots of attention to yourself so you can soak up nasty stuff, how much you’re healing the party is a secondary concern at most.

Amongst North American servers, the tier 1 matchup (Tarnished Coast, Blackgate, Jade Quarry) is probably tighter than any other. Coverage being what it is, it’s far from equal, but if you look at the score history, there are a lot of close games, and any of the three has the potential to grind out a win each week.

(A note about NA T1. Anyone who says the phrase “push week” ominously like it’s win-trading is an idiot and you should ignore them, or laugh at them. So far, the people I’ve grilled about this have ended up being: randoms from T4 who spend too much time on the PvF forums, T2 folks who are mad that the Glicko system won’t let them break into T1 even though they honestly would be murdered in Coverage Wars anyway, or T1 dabblers/fairweathers who don’t even use their server’s VoIP. So basically the people eager to lecture you about how T1 “really” works don’t have any clue how anything on TC, BG, or JQ actually operates.)

If you’re just playing in the NA timezone, it’s likely there are a number of servers across tiers that have good balanced matchups. IIRC, their off-peak timezones tend to be less and less balanced as you go down the “tiers,” however.

Playing a zerky character, I’m not dying any more than I was in the past.

Actually less so since Distortion is no longer garbage on non-IP builds (there was a conspicuous effect lag while waiting for the clones to shatter, before).

A Volcano.2510:

(2) Why do mesmers have to have so many pets? Can’t we just be super-clever and tricksy without the pets? Do you need to have a pet to be tricky?

They’re not pets. They’re little packets of damage/CC/invuln that happen to also confuse scrubs every once in a while.

Before: good mesmers crush me, bad mesmers get rekt, the way CI phantspam builds stack four conditions on one interrupt (covering the immobilize) annoys me, killing thieves requires pretty much perfect play, I play a weird build nobody else likes.

After: good mesmers crush me at about the same speed as before, bad mesmers get rekt even faster, the way CI phantspam builds stack five conditions on one interrupt (covering the immobilize so you die fast) annoys me, I can punish thieves’ mistakes as hard as they can punish mine, I play a weird build nobody else likes.

Honestly, the biggest difference for me — since I didn’t take IP before so my shatters were weak and harder to time — is that now when I fight someone doing something stupid, I feel like I always have a way to hurt them instead of having to poke and prod and hope an accumulation of mistakes on their part will allow me to triumph.

I won’t deny that mesmers are pretty flippin’ good right now. (Heh, finally.)

But some of the stuff y’all are saying makes me question how the heck you ever survived WvW at all, given the volume of thieves and mediguards and such who are all capable of doing the same thing. Not to mention the Perplexity-troll roaming meta in general.

I run into a lot of other mesmers. Quite often, I’m not the one bursting first, nor the one bursting hardest. But I still melt them. There’s serious play here if you actually pay attention and know what you’re doing.

Doam.8305:

Mesmer shatter isn’t versatile at all

Uh, you’re kidding, right?

^ Watch that video. You won’t regret it.

Note how almost all of these tricks are based around putting up illusions you plan to shatter immediately. That’s how you get around the pesky clones-dying-like-flies thing.

Beyond that, I find it best not to think of shattering as a rotation. It’s more like a moment of opportunity. It helps to know the combos when you’ve got the jump on someone, or you landed a stun/immobilize and you want to make them explode ASAP or whatever, but mostly my focus with shattering is just “Who can I catch right now?” That can mean shattering all kinds of odd times.

Robert Gee.9246:

Unicorns 4 Life

My first reaction to seeing the new Inspiration stuff, both the abilities and the build/training screens, was “GW2 really gets me.”

I’m happy. The game’s been fun for me. A lot of the new changes emphasize stuff I like — both the general feel of forcing enemies to do more than execute their rotation, and specific gameplay elements like interrupts, mantras, and general “slippery” abilities (new PU may be a bit much, if I’m honest — that’s not a big deal and will shake out in time, though).

I think the rebalance has diminished some of the old “build an intricate trap of clones in order to blow up your enemies” factor. But instead they’ve recaptured a bit more of the feel of GW1 mesmers: exceptionally good at messing up rotations and punishing misplays, but you have to build with a specific purpose in mind and play precisely.

Like, look at the choice of Evasive Mirror vs. Blinding Dissipation in Dueling: they’re both powerful counters to different kinds of enemies, requiring active timing on your part to really use effectively.

I don’t mind the trade at all.

What strikes me as interesting is how many possibilities for changing your gender presentation there are in the game setting — for example: Total Makeover Kits, mesmer magic, Whispers shapeshifting magic, alchemical tonics — and yet it’s kind of a surprise that Sya actually does it. That’s the thing about inclusive content: when it comes to many (real-world) marginalized groups, we’re used to erasure as the default; sometimes we don’t even entertain a super-obvious logical possibility until it’s made an explicit thing in the world somewhere.

Harper.4173:

So not caring is no longer neutral basically. I cannot separate myself from this issue and am forced to take a side.

If the question is “do you oppose it” and I answer no people will automatically assume I support it. I want the situation where I don’t do either. What do you call that?

Okay, your question is literally: Why are people rude to me sometimes when I say I don’t give a kitten about them in any way?

Because saying you don’t give a kitten about someone in any way is, in itself, rude.

If you’re signalling to someone that they’re not worth your time and vice versa, the response is going to be dismissive, not polite. Because when you’re not worth their time, people dismiss you.

DragonflyDusk.6582:

That sounds extremely backwards in progressing “equality”. And to be quite frank that reeks of “your opinion is different than mine, so it doesn’t matter.” Not to mention being a breath away from “Not all people are equal.”

When it comes to me and my life and my body, my own judgement is paramount.
When it comes to you and your life and your body, your own judgement is paramount.
That’s “equality.”

Are you imagining some kind of bizarro world where we’re not truly “equal” until we literally erase the concept of self? That’s not really what anybody wants.

I have similar bad habits.

I often find myself dodging sideways once pointlessly while still at range at the beginning of the fight. Which would normally set up a clone kinda “off-side” out of the path of most attacks coming my way, ready to shatter as they get closer. But, dang, it’s pretty stupid. It’s not even that great for a DE-based build.

Also, I tend to shatter excessively because I’m used to needing to do it compulsively just to get any decent damage, even in a lockdown build. My poor, poor Defenders are dying way before their times.

Sarevok.2638:

Then why is the character’s choice “brave”? Why not “Oh nice” or “Hope it works for you” or “So how about Lion’s Arch?”

Shrug.

She says: “[Fighting Scarlet] reminded me of how short life is and how we should spend every moment embracing who we are.”

That’s a “brave” sentiment, emotionally, even in the absence of social discrimination or violent threat. Because, in fact, most people do compromise “who we are” all the time, in all sorts of little ways — in pursuit of comfort, safety, status, self-image.

Even if changing your gender in Tyria was as easy as changing your hair color, doing a complete reversal and embracing an aspect of yourself you’d kept under wraps previously could still be called “brave” in casual conversation. It’s not like the protagonist jumps up and down yelling “OMG GIVE THIS WOMAN A MEDAL!”

I’ve now spent way more time close-reading GW2 NPC dialogue that I’d ever intended to. :/

Harper.4173:

1. I have already expressed a statement about Sya – I do not care that he/she exists.

Then maybe this thread doesn’t require your continued involvement. That’s okay! I drive by dozens of threads I don’t care about every day. I don’t post in them.

Harper.4173:

6. I could ignore the topic at hand and chatter – sure – but I would like to be informed. That’s why I came here. It’s what you claim to want people to be. Informed and aware. Maybe if you did that you might actually win ground. I certainly would like to know and understand more about a thing that I’m not very familiar with since my country doesn’t really have this phenomenon.

If that’s unwelcome I guess that says a lot.

If you’re poorly-informed about a topic, trying to “debate” it with “scientific” sources and endless definitional minutiae isn’t a good way to learn more.

Because, given the conflict between your stated goal and your presentation, one of these two things must be true:
1. You’re not as naive as you claim to be, so it’s an act to deflect criticism.
2. You are as naive as you claim to be, so your arguments aren’t well-founded anyway but you’re constantly wasting time by insisting people provide detailed point-by-point rebuttals to a statement that’s basically a pile of empty broken nonsense.

Either way, this is hostile and arguing in bad faith. What’s the point?

Harper.4173:

So why then do we have 10 pages of this thread?

Things you could do in this thread that don’t involve trying to “debate” the legitimacy of trans identity (all taken from actual examples in this thread):
1. Express your reaction to seeing Sya in the game. (Unless your reaction is straight-up screeching bigotry, which would violate the ToS; note how many people who were less-than-comfortable managed to say something and not get banned or have their posts deleted, however! The mods obviously aren’t being overzealous.)
2. Mention other characters you’d like to see.
3. Discuss issues about media representation, such as tokenism and erasure. <- This is a big one. You could easily have a 50-page thread about this.
4. Have opinions about the dialogue, or Sya’s wardrobe choices, or whatever.
5. Talk about how Total Makeover Kits fit into the game’s lore now that physical transition is clearly established as feasible in the setting.
6. All kinds of other stuff, I’m sure.

Note how many of these are effectively “negative” responses and yet don’t involve attacking the very idea of self-determined gender identity or trans people’s right to exist in society!

This isn’t rocket science.

It’s just that some people really want to have that one “debate” anywhere they can find it, no matter how inappropriate or unwelcome it is.

Harper.4173:

You can’t have a rational debate based on arguments if scientific arguments offend the person you’re debating.

A gaming forum isn’t the right place to “debate” someone’s basic dignity or right to self-determination.

Even if you haphazardly slather some SCIENCE! over it.

Sarevok.2638:

As I mentioned in a previous post the fact the NPC’s dialogue should we engage with it forces us to…

Dude, have you played this game? There’s a lot of “off-hand” dialogue that just assumes something and doesn’t really bother to carve multiple choices out for the characters. It’s set up that way because, generally, this kind of minor explanatory chatter isn’t really a space for “roleplaying” a character anyway.

You’re seeing a sinister agenda (or, actually, a non-sinister agenda) in something that’s entirely standard for GW2 NPC interactions.

Sarevok.2638:

I apologise if I’m getting gradually more aggressive in tone over the the thread but this is one issue I’ve been facing in the gaming world day after day and I’m not going to name the groups responsible more for attributing to that, but I’m sure we know who they are. It’s utterly mindboggling.

Your previous post indicates that you’re going to drag this all into “Gamergate” nonsense.

If you’re finding yourself more and more agitated about some LGBT folks and their friends expressing their happiness over a few lines of text in a game — or their disapproval of folks who literally say that any representation of them in media is somehow inherently political or distasteful, — my recommendation to you is to stop consuming three-hour long videos where a guy cries about “SJWs” all day long.

Learn to live and let live, dude.

Doghouse.1562:

What are we left with? 270 distinct builds (27 different permutations of major trait per Core Specialization; 10 possible combinations of 3 Core Specializations. That’s yer lot).

270 versus maybe half a billion. In any profession, excluding incomplete builds, there are now exactly 270 different ways to fully spec your traits. That’s it. Probability that your “clever” new build is actually simply a carbon copy of lots of others running around out there – 100%. Room for creativity? Pretty much none. We’re going to be running cookie-cutter builds now, whether we want to or not. And, while I don’t dislike the new system per se – that’s a real shame.)

You’re forgetting:
1. Weapon choices
2. Stats from gear
3. Rune pick (possibly picks, though you basically always want all 6 to be the same)
4. Sigil picks for weapons
5. Food and similar buffs (outside SPvP)

All this stuff can totally make or break a build, and not just in the trivial ways (look at how many builds are relying on very specific sigils to do some heavy lifting for them).

DarkSyze.8627:

Taking away Freedom Of Choice from your customers will never be acceptable or rewarded.

You want the freedom to choose… what, exactly? Whether trans people exist in the game or not?

That’s really weird, dude.

Props to Anet for a small but effective nod at representation. I think you could do better, but it’s worth recognizing that you did well.

Slops to the chunk of the GW2 community that feels the need to turn a thread about it into a festival of ignorance. Huge slops. Bigger slops than I’ve ever wished on anyone in-game.

MailMail.6534:

And just for the record, I don’t see anything majorly bad about the Power Block nerf. I also didn’t see anything too bad with the Staff nerf except you over-nerfed it when 3% would have been more balanced (basic math proves this). The biggest issue is the maim nerf, because it simply reinforces the trend that has happened with Mesmers since the game came out.

Rinse wash repeat with the devs:

• Quick to “fix bugs” that lessen Mesmer effectiveness.
• Quick to fix bugs on other classes that boost their effectiveness.
• Slow to fix our bugs.
• Quick to nerf our traits/skills.
• Slow to nerf traits/skills of other classes. See Healing Signet & Turrets.

Yeah, there’s a pattern of “Drop a big buff that looks suspiciously good on paper and then ends up kinda OP in play, Smiter’s-Boon something into irrelevance after 24 hours, spend months dawdling on how to raise the values back up to a useful level.”

Best take your time with nerfs and don’t leave the balance halfway done.

Even without stacking, changing Temporal Curtain to overwrite your swiftness if you have less than the amount it would give you would make it quite a bit easier to use. No more “Well, you had 1.5 seconds left, so obviously you don’t need more swiftness” thing.

Here’s the thing with the old system: a lot of the individual traits were pretty rubbish.

I think part of the insight of the new one is recognizing that this game can’t really pull off 6 adept-tier traits in five trait lines per class without the majority of the adept traits being little more than newbie traps. There’s just not enough stuff to customize in every class.