Guild Wars 2

I find it easier to snipe down 3-4 eles than a single guardian in Nomad gear constantly getting group buffs and water fields.

Even when the guardian has an obnoxious neon mohawk.

Based on the current HoT previews, you have a lot of choices for lockdown…

Domination has Power Block (the new trait that folds in Halting Strike), boon ripping, and stun-on-daze (now guaranteed). Because of what Power Block brings to the table, I’d say this line is utterly essential to a lockdown build.

Beyond that, though:

• Chrono has the Lost Time + Danger Time combo, which helps you debuff opponents and makes it easier to interrupt important stuff.
• Chaos still has the all-powerful Chaotic Interruption.
• Dueling has Deceptive Evasion, which may still end up being de-facto required for mesmer builds. It’s also looking good for Pistol-using interrupt builds. Don’t forget that Blind-on-shatter is a useful new addition to the “lockdown” toolbox.
• Illusions is a bit sparse but current speculation is that the GM shatters-get-better trait folds in the current multi-target Diversion trait. This is very powerful in a team fight, but previously it was held back by IP being so much more flexible as a trait.
  (Inspiration doesn’t directly help but may end up having useful survival or team support features.)

I think the most interesting thing is that it’s gonna be pretty easy to make “hybrid” lockdown/shatter builds (a lot of lockdown builds already shatter some, but now you can shatter harder) now that IP is baked into mesmer abilities. Given the current tendency to take Halting Strike in shatter builds, it wouldn’t surprise me if a typical HoT shatter spec is actually using Power Block and integrating control effects into its shatters.

Any tips for getting Swap to connect? There are a lot of times when I’ll pop it to try to stop movement and it does nothing. Like they moved out of clone range between the clone deciding to pop and the immob actually hitting.

So, okay, my ability to give play advice to someone I’ve never met through forum posts is kinda limited, but let’s cover some low-hanging fruit (small simple stuff I can just explain concisely):

• Why do you run Mantra of Pain? Most builds that use it are gimmick builds that run Restorative Mantras and totally spam MoP as fast as possible (which is a net DPS loss compared to doing autos, but that’s why it’s a gimmick build). That’s not what you’re doing and, based on how you like to move around, not really what you want to be doing, either. It’s not a lot of damage for the recharge time you’re investing in it — which, granted, you’re mostly doing while running away, but you could just as easily be using that time to wait out the cooldowns for a better skill like Null Field, Decoy, or Signet of Domination.
• Please try Arcane Thievery instead of Mimic. You’ll get to steal boons from opponents and remove conditions from yourself, too.
• At 8:30, you downed that enemy mesmer and just abandoned her. What you want to be doing there, if at all possible, is applying pressure to kill her for good, which would have allowed you to 1v1 the guardian instead of being outnumbered. (Either throw a bunch of damage on her or stomp her — that means run up and press F.)

The thing with Lich is that you’re likely not popping it cold at the start of a fight. You’re probably popping it when everyone’s been at this for a while and burned a lot of resources: dodges, hp, cooldowns. So talking about how totally-fresh players (who aren’t even mesmers) can contain a Lich is kind of asking the wrong question.

(Moa, in turn, is less of a killer spell when you and your team aren’t ready to capitalize on it with lots of immob and burst.)

I think the main thing you need to do to make shatter more useful in srs-bsns PvE is to move more sustained DPS off of the phantasms and into the regular attacks themselves. Then it’d be more like balancing one kind of utility (from keeping phantasms up; e.g. reflects or keeping a control condition on your target) vs. another (from shattering; e.g. group condi clearing or boon rips) — not necessarily the most engaging gameplay since there will be lots of times when one is obviously superior to the other, but more flexible and less punishing than what we have now.

The comparison to ranger DPS is pretty apt here.

1. Blind spam is fairly good against Liches.
2. …
3. Therefore, Moa shouldn’t be good against Liches.

Daniel Handler.4816:

Remember that with Chronomancer Moa can have a double decrease in CD and you end up with two Moa every 90 seconds.

…. Are you sure that chrono can stack even remotely close to this much CD reduction?

The idea that “WvW peeps worked hard for their guard stacks” is kinda bunk given that EotM exists and players who farm it to death gain WvW ranks faster than a lot of folks actually fighting in the Mists.

And, let’s face it, guard stacks are also the most selfish WvW trait lines. As much as I love the extra ~3k hp and 100 power, if this forces more pugs to actually pick up abilities like supply mastery or AC mastery, it’ll be a net improvement.

My WvW gear (power build):

• Zerk weapons
• Zerk armor with Traveler runes
• Mix of trinkets for a little bit of added Vitality/Toughness

I prefer to switch out trinkets than to switch out armor, because it’s easier to obtain them without spending a lot of gold, you don’t have to buy multiples of runes, and if it turns out I don’t actually want that Soldier’s ring or whatever later, it’s very easy to recycle it for a different character.

Jayne.9251:

I was away a year and came back and experienced the same thing. I thought, geeze, I’m so far behind now.

Turns out I was just rusty and needed to get back into it again, cos I’m fine now. Even with basically the same setup as last year.

I’d say the main difference now is you really have to watch your feet a lot more as a front-liner (stability gets stripped faster and you can get caught up by venom wells), and your positioning as a back-liner (pick teams).

Overall, though, it’s much the same dynamic as, like, WvW Season 2.

Basic stuff:

• Get to level 80 and get exotic gear (at least).
• Don’t gear full zerk unless you’re confident in your build and reflexes.
• Use buffs from food. Depending on your build, you’ll want food that reduces condi duration on you, buffs your own condition duration, or boosts your damage. It’s okay to buy cheap (sub-level-80) food/oils; commanders often drop food at spawn, or in the field right before a big engagement.
• If you’re playing melee, learn to stay on the tag — falling behind actually hurts you more because you eat up a lot more AoE.
• If you’re playing backline, watch how the other backliners move (particularly necros — eles tend to flit about more) and try to stick with them until you develop your own instincts more.
• If you’re roaming, make sure you have condition clears and stun breaks. Speed buffs and movement skills help a lot, too. (Full-on stability isn’t essential.)
• Most groups on most servers use some kind of VoIP coordination, like Teamspeak. Even if you don’t want to talk, pick it up so you can listen. Coordination makes a huge difference in your survival and effectiveness.

urieldhynne.2743:

I HAVE NO TIME (or I don’t want to) to farm an ascended, the same some players have no time to get WvW ranks.

I’ve got a bunch of ascended gear. Full armor, trinkets, most of my weapons.

I’m a 95% WvW/SPvP player. Most of this stuff was acquired in the past four months, since it’d been away from the game for a while. The only “farming” I really did was converting karma to linen.

So, yeah, it’s work, but it’s within your reach. Which is basically the situation for PvE players crafting ascended gear as well. Sure, they can probably farm it up faster but you can get ascended gear just through regular play.

(And, no, when I say WvW I don’t include EotM.)

Well, it is called “far” for a reason.

Elementalists get good access to Swiftness and movement skills.

Your opponent likely just used Lightning Flash or Fiery Greatsword.

If your openers are too obvious, try just not opening with ’em. Like, Mirror Blade is something you can just throw whenever, particularly at close range. It also has a small enough cooldown that you can use it for “fake outs.”

This video’s just a bit old but it’s got some great examples of super-fast shatters: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tcjVz12Ago

Well, no PvE or WvW mesmer builds call for Celestial gear, so you don’t have to craft anything unless you want Ascended gear.

For Ascended gear, you’re likely to want (on any character — doesn’t have to be you rmesmer), in priority order:
1. Weaponsmith or Artificer (covers Greatsword + Sword + Shield, and Staff + Scepter + Focus, respectively)
2. Tailor (for armor — less “bang for your buck” than the weapon-crafting ones, though)
3. Huntsman (Torch + Pistol — these are off-hands only)

Don’t really have to rush, though. You can level some through crafting but it’s not very gold-efficient compared to just buying stuff with karma or on the TP.

TyPin.9860:

Up until now I had a feeling that the Mesmer community had a more unbiased view of things. It seems I was wrong. Especially the amount of nonconstructive trolling in this thread somewhat surprised me.

You haven’t really offered much of an argument. Just “It sucks when you go Lich and get Moa’d.” Most of your other posts here are about how people are overstating the “counters” to Moa, which is true, but that’s arguing down in the weeds while you haven’t really established your thesis very strongly.

I don’t think anyone’s really disputing that losing sweet, sweet Lich Form is a feel-bad moment. But, like, so what? The game is full of feel-bad moments.

Nope. It should definitely turn you into a Moa.

One turns you into an engine of destruction for 30s on a 180s cooldown, complete with near-immunity to control that would slow down your awesome pew-pew power.

The other is a glorified extra-long daze on a 180s cooldown. One of the main reasons you’d take it at all is to be able to deal with Lich Form.

The other most common counters to Lich? “Focus fire” and “run away.” It’s a powerful skill.

Is it annoying when Moa breaks your Lich Form? Oh, I’m sure. But the game’s full of annoying things. If a mesmer’s just saving Moa to counter Lich Form, you have the advantage: not activating Lich during that particular basically means her elite’s wasted as well. And you can easily save Lich and pop it later when the mesmer’s elsewhere or out of commission.

With your proposed changes, there’s nearly no downside to just popping Lich whenever you want. Either your opponent doesn’t have Moa and you get to rampage unhindered, or she does and you… burn your elite to force out hers, with no detriment to yourself.

HM+Mender’s REPRESENT!

I play 6/6/0/2/0 interrupts and, occasionally, 0/6/0/2/6 MtD. So hooked on that combo.

No lies: HoT is gonna be bittersweet for me. But there are soooo many things to look forward to. Like new Power Block, Evasive Mirror, the Chrono line, built-in IP, and even new Mender’s Purity.

Try Mender’s Purity. It’s soooo much condi cleanse.

TyPin.9860:

The more I think about it, the more I like a reveal effect after stealth expires. It effects chain stealthing only and might be a good thing to when fighting stealth heavy classes/builds (looking at you PU Mesmers and D/P Thieves^^).

I feel like it’s gunning for builds that use stealth for damage/sustain but mostly hurting builds that use stealth for escape/utility.

Sure, sometimes thieves chain stealth and it’s really annoying, but oftentimes they’re already sucking up Revealed because that’s how they do big Backstab damage or stack tons of conditions on you. They can use intense mobility, Blind spam, and dodging to cover that Revealed time pretty easily.

PU builds don’t need to Reveal themselves as often (since they don’t have a powerful “sneak attack” from stealth), but a typical flow is to go into stealth for boons, pop out to load up an enemy with conditions or phantasms while Prot/Aegis/&c. help you survive a bit, then pop back in for more boons. Chaining stealth on a PU build is often wasteful.

Note also how both these builds are gonna have super-long-duration stealth without needing to chain, in the form of Shadow Refuge or (post-HoT) double-duration Mass Invis.

In contrast, there are a lot of times when you’re playing something like Sword/Torch shatter where you’ll want to chain stealth to get the heck out of a bad situation. Stealth is undoubtedly very powerful, but I don’t think it’s particularly unfair that if you kill someone without blowing a lot of high-cooldown skills, you can then use those skills to get away when their buddies show up.

In my view, Stealth applying Revealed doesn’t do much to stealth-spammers. Playing around Revealed is already part of their flow. If you want to discourage or tone down those builds, you need to limit how spammable stealth is, or their ability to turn stealth into sustain (like mesmer PU regen or thief Shadow Arts healing).

As far as future stuff, here’s an example build that also tries to get big damage out of Greatsword autos (thanks to Danger Time critical rate):
http://dulfy.net/gw2traits#build=AgMBXAJkBrQ~

For what it’s worth, I feel your pain — I play a build with Halting Strike + Greatsword Training and Deceptive Evasion + Harmonious Mantras, which are both becoming exclusive now — but I think all the new swag is gonna open up a lot of new possibilities.

Replace Mental Torment with Halting Strike. Now your Mantra of Distraction does something.
Replace Compounding Power with Mender’s Purity. Now you don’t get rolled by condition builds.

When my guild group is outnumbered, we like to chain Mass Invis to disengage or reposition more favorably.

So, yes, deeply frustrating.

The typical Conquest map creates a strong incentive to split up and move around the map, resulting in a mix of different fights (different sizes, different classes) in different terrain. The downside is that you can get “unbalanced” fights and there’s huge pressure to fight on point.

Courtyard, in contrast, rewards always sticking together as a group and turns the whole match into one protracted 5v5 fight — often just a bit of back-and-forth on one of the side passages.

Personally, I don’t mind the idea of a big group fight, but the map’s shape and the particular beat of respawns makes it much less fun than similar situations that occur in WvW (two havoc groups fighting over a camp, for example).

Because the more separate queues you put in, the harder it is to get games firing quickly and with decent matchmaking.

Also, they seem to think some gear is simply unsuitable for SPvP-style matches (most conspicuously absent: Dire amulet and Perplexity runes).

Important errata:

We use the Tarnished Coast Server Wide Mumble and is something you must use.

It’s all Teamspeak now.

[[This is totally a side conversation about the role of rangers in WvW. Please do not interpret this as part of the general “Rangers are OP because stealth isn’t invuln!” argument or anything like that.]]

Toxsa.2701:

Rangers are almost always useless in T1 zerg fight.

You forgot about JOY, though.

I get where you’re coming from. I really do. Sometimes people get attached to bad builds when they could have more fun if they just accepted that “cookie-cutter” isn’t bad (You know what comes out of a cookie cutter? DELICIOUS COOKIES!), especially if they don’t want to bother to really test and refine and analyze builds themselves.

~

That said, I’m pretty sure my entire team decided to “cripple” themselves when they solo-queued for Unranked instead of making a premade with Teamspeak/Mumble for comms.

My choice to play a slightly off-brand version of a profession that most of the top PvP teams don’t even have a place for anyway isn’t going to do as much damage in comparison.

The Tarnished Coast server community has moved to a new site: http://tcwvw.com/
The old site is still running but it’s largely inactive, and, to my knowledge, no longer validating new registrations.

Thanks for keeping up this list, Clara!

Making builds and being able to play them effectively are two rather distinct skills.

This is 2015, not 1995. You really can’t expect people not to share every little piece of information about a game. (Anet generally encourages it, with features like the integrated wiki.)

Just because someone pulled a build from Metabattle doesn’t mean they’ll be able to do well with it. While the topmost builds are generally designed to cover for small mistakes with power/flexibility/sustain, a lot of them do rely on learning both specific combos/rotations and carefully marshaling your resources. Quite a few Metabattle builds still make it easy to fall on your face if you don’t know what you’re doing and just mash buttons on cooldown.

Leonhardt.8164:

dont get why people are so pumped over time marches on, you have to sacrifice the new f5 skill for a 25% movement boost? that sucks, doesnt change gameplay at all, i just wont be as slow as others, big deal, I dont see the hype whatsoever
I feel the f5 skill is the go to choice compared to the other two, for all situations
TIME SPLITER FTW
SCREW TIME MARCHES ON, it’s only for people with ADHD

They’re the minor traits. You don’t choose one: you get all three of them “for free” for taking the trait line.

aspirine.6852:

I almost wish it was back at the beginning when the thief was the rangers worst enemy. Now they have none?

Plenty of characters kill pew-pew rangers quite easily.

For that matters, thieves definitely don’t, like, die to them out of hand.

This whole thread is about folks playing a very particular one-and-done build (that a lot of WvW thieves now avoid in favor of more flexible builds) and not knowing how to use their very limited (by their own choice!) set of defensive abilities to deal with rangers who don’t go down instantly when attacked. Shrug.

To be honest, I’d rather get good mileage out of the ~20 skills I like and use now than a couple more weapon skills.

Plus, Evasive Mirror is cooler to me than anything you could put on a weapon.

Logically, I’m pretty sure even the first arrow through my chest would put me in a “down state.”

Lore-wise, thieves smell, which makes them very easy for a hunter to track.

Playing a thief for, what, maybe even 3 years now, you’ve hopefully learned not to stand in red circles. Channeled skills are like that. Trust me: nearly everyone finds Rapid Fire pretty annoying. Annoying isn’t OP.

If you want to talk about how it’s annoying that channels track in stealth, let’s talk about how it’s annoying that gobs and gobs of skills can’t be activated at all without a target.

Note also that HoT is giving thieves some new projectile avoidance (above and beyond generous dodge/evade access and Dagger Storm, that is).

Mesmers, also.

ODB.6891:

It doesn’t increase our power, we are still weak against CC…it just helps us move around a lot better.

So, okay, that technically is a “power” increase because the alternative — Trav runes — was a pretty heavy price. Now you can have your kiting/running speed and still access runes with useful stat buffs or special abilities.

(No complaints about TMO from me. Besides “This is what a movement-related trait should be; spread the love around even more, plz!”)

apharma.3741:

Seize The Moment – Gain quickness for each illusion you shatter. (1s of Quickness) Thinking maybe add superspeed to it also or maybe slows enemies by an equal amount to the quickness you get.

It’s already pretty powerful since the Quickness is on demand.

Think about something like no-clone CoF (with Illusionary Reversion) → Mirror Blade + Mind Stab + dodge-shatter.

apharma.3741:

I’d make a shield trait instead. Maybe allow echo memory and tides of time to recharge each other?

The thing about a shield trait is that you’re only getting a Shield at all if you go into Chrono, at which point it’d be pretty trivial to pick up the trait. Compare to other weapons where you might use Staff jukes or Focus pulls or Blurred Frenzy or GS burst without ever picking the related trait line at all. (With wells it’s at least the kind of thing where maybe if you just have 1-2 you won’t take the trait.)

I don’t have the exact figures anymore, but Bloodlust is a significant part of weekly point totals, at least in the higher tiers.

There’s already a good reason to grab multiples: to deny your opponents the points they’d otherwise pick up in fights.

Also, the stat bonuses are fairly small, but denying Bloodlust has about as much impact as turning off an enemy’s guild buffs. That’s not worth nothing.

It’s not something commanders should be dealing with directly, most times. Bloodlust is an objective scaled for havoc and roamers (two people can claim in it about three minutes, if uncontested).

apharma.3741:

Chronophantasm – it looks good on paper but I don’t often have the problem of shattering them and wanting them back. I have the problem of they just die to all the aoe in the game. Perhaps they just respawn after the first death whether it be shatter or aoe killed?

The version you’re talking about would be sooooooo annoying in PvP, though.

I think some of the points about supply bottlenecks, area control, &c. raised by others are very worthwhile. Beyond, that, though:

• Needs a god’s shrine to be built:
  That shrine costs something between 500 and 1000 supply
  The shrine is no upgrade but a build site inside a keep
• Once the shrine is build, players go there and contribute karma to a human god of their choosing (contributes to the title: “Advocate of [god name]”, which grants access to unique skins)

What stops achievement hunters from completely draining a keep just so they can try to farm skins/titles off the shrine?

Note that the top-end servers tend to be “full” a lot so transferring to them requires waiting a bit. Best way to do it is to contact someone (they’re often recruiting WvWers) and ask them.

You can use this page to see roughly which “tier” a server is in.

The top end has much higher WvW populations, especially during off hours (i.e. outside of Western-Europe evening for EU servers or outside of NA evening for US servers), and some kind of organized thing going 24/7. They’ll also tend to have queues during peak hours.

The lower you go, the more sparsely-populated stuff gets, especially during off hours. Past that you sorta need to inquire about individual servers/matchups because exactly why Server X is in a particular spot can vary dramatically. You might find a tier-3 server that has a great and balanced OCX matchup but loses the entire map on SEA, for example. I don’t know much about the EU servers so I can’t say anything more specific.

Elorna.5329:

This sort of build is probably why the crit slow trait will have a 10s or so ICD.

The thing is, perma-slow on one target is not that unfair. It’s powerful but not nearly as debilitating as high uptime on chill, for example.

Good reply, Tetrodoxin!

Still, that wouldn’t negate the fact of this 25% buff existing two times. I don’t think that’s a good circumstance at all. Does it stack? Would be OP. It doesn’t? Welp, incompatible traits aren’t good either. It just feels wrong to have two traits that similar.

I think we know +25% buffs don’t stack based on testing other classes with traits/signets that give the same thing.

I agree that it’d be sorta inelegant to have two +25% passive speed traits, which makes a different mechanic for Compounding Celerity kinda desirable. I think one being a major means it’s not a particularly grave issue, though.

I suppose from the trait line’s general perspective, a Swiftness boon makes more sense (since you can try to combo it with the new Signet-of-Inspiration-phantasm trait or whatever). Still thinking.

tetrodoxin.2134:

However, I’m not a huge fan of the promoted solution. You see, the Inspiration line is meant to provide support. A passive 25% speed boost fits to the Chronomancer, I don’t think that’s the case for Inspiration.

I think a 25% passive speed boost with some additional “supportive” rider probably fits the line just fine.

Why? Look at the HoT Adept tier. All three traits want you to be close to allies who are getting absolutely pounded on. But you’re playing a class that isn’t meant to facetank damage at all, outside of short bursts of evasion. Playing “combat medic” effectively actually benefits from mobility even more than playing an aggressive role. (I don’t think Inspiration should be pigeonholed into this niche entirely, though. Let’s face it: Mender’s Purity is also good for purely selfish reasons, and this is perfectly fine.)

It’s certainly not the only way to do it, though, of course!

tetrodoxin.2134:

Shattered Celerity:
Grant swiftness (5s) to your allies for each illusion shattered (10s ICD).

I see where you’re going with this, but I think the specific example isn’t effective.

• Your net overland speed when you’re by yourself is actually considerably slower than Trav runes.
• It’s so fiddly. Like Speedy Kits but you have to put important stuff on cooldown instead of just spamming your pseudo-weapon-swap with abandon.

Overall, it’s a trait I’d consider taking for the group buff while still wearing Trav runes so I can keep my personal speed up, especially in bad circumstances.

tetrodoxin.2134:

Some might say that it’d be overpowered for Power shatter builds to be that mobile.

Enh, that ship has sailed already, given how many new tools for bursty power shatter builds are in Chrono anyway.

Quadox.7834:

But that doesn’t fix the fact that it is random and super annoying to play against! Think incendiary powder, but probably worse!

Given the obvious synergy with the Danger Time trait, I don’t think it’s gonna have a particularly random feel: there’s a “warm up” period and then it’s probably near constant, or rather predictable (like 2s on / 2s off) if not. If you can force the mesmer to play more defensively and stop attacking you for a bit, then it forces them back into the “warm up” stage instead.

Err, “push weeks” aren’t a coordinated match-fixing thing. They’re just one server or another deciding to go into full-on try-hard mode that week.

Why do that? Because it’s good practice in general, and it can help morale — especially if you’ve been stuck in 3rd for a while.

When you see someone on the kittenpile forum saying “Oh, it’s JQ’s push week,” that’s not “Oh, we all decided JQ should win this week.” It means “It’s really obvious JQ is trying harder than usual.”

Also, please don’t trust anything from the kittenpile forums.

What’s your alternative? Stand there and take it?

Again: the whole point of stealth, the big advantage of it, is to force your opponent to just guess.

You’re annoyed that it’s possible to guess right but you think it’s “skillful” or whatever when you get to freely punish them for guessing wrong? Or…?

Archon.6481:

Your idea of fixing something that you think is broken with blind luck is hardly fair or balanced.

My idea? I just made a joke about subscribing to that other guy’s newsletter.

The idea that an opponent consciously deciding that now is a good time to dodge is “RNG” is silly. Do you also complain about RNG when someone guesses right and downs you with an AoE blast?

~

Also, let’s not forget the true purpose of this thread: to laugh at thieves who get owned by a single point-blank Rapid Fire because all they know how to do is combo and stealth. This is just a pointless distraction.