Guild Wars 2

Im Mudbone.1437:

There are SOME with HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS in gold(I have seen the in-game videos), sooooo, there a few making tons of gold farming/TP flipping.

I sure hope you weren’t confused by a lot of the preview-server videos that goes up once in a while, where they’ll have excessive amounts of Gold for no other reason than to test things out. Or the devs videos on that same server. The “test server” one might also call it.

Those videos are in-game too, but it doesn’t necessarily get specified that it’s not on the LIVE servers in all of them. There’s a difference. You say in-game, and that doesn’t mean squat diddly anything. It can be in-game on a test server.

If only we could salvage our Karma rewards still… mhm.

I’d much rather see it included in the matchups, so that it perhaps would stop being a PvE map, and actually a WvW map as it’s supposed to be. The map itself is so awesome in design, it’s a shame it got neglected and turned into this train of players avoiding combat. Such a wasted effort in helping to make WvW fresh. We needed new maps, WvW maps. This could have been one.

I don’t think anyone makes fun of a Thief for being a high burst, high damage, evasive profession. They make fun of the D/D thieves who only jumped on the profession because they saw some video on YouTube, thinking it was awesome that it had the ability to insta-gib someone. You know, the rather poorly skilled thieves, the ones that will Heartseeker spam. The ones that will abandon the profession over a balance change. If you get bored and want to play something else for a while, that’s different, that’ll happen to everyone on every profession, but if you leave the profession because of a balance change, you were there for the easy mode, the flavor of the month. Simple as that. The Thief is still good at what it does and a very fun profession to play. It’s still rather difficult to actually mess up so badly that you get killed on Thief, and if you do, you got greedy and you deserve to eat that dirt.

Tried my best to make a Canthan inspired Thief a while back. Poor thing, she’s now trapped in her costume, unable to take it off. She also has a dagger equipped that she can’t use. She’s so confused.

Asmodeus.5782:

Putting out fire with water (!) removed.

I found it a bit amusing when I was semi-AFK near the first heart in Queensdale, and the NPC shouts that I need to grab a bucket of water and help put out the fires. There were no fires, there were no buckets. There was a player or two killing the Bandits, so I can’t say if any of the hay balls gets actually put on fire anymore, but still.. the dialogue was so out of place now that the bundles are gone.

Sorry mate, but you live in a little bubble if you think that’s how the world functions when someone gets upset. You can’t go around cushioning and weighing everything you say, and you quite honestly shouldn’t. “You’re acting in a self-destructive manner”, is barely different to an intelligent being, compared to saying, “Hey.. you’re being plain stupid right now”. I have respect enough for the employees at ArenaNet to not baby them. They’re grown men and women. I expect and believe they are perfectly capable of distancing themselves from negativity directed at the company and/or “devs” as a whole, thereby not taking it personally on a individual mentally scarring level.

We’re not lashing out at Colin personally for having a great smile here, it’s not personal attacks. The company represents the frustration, the “devs” are an objectification of what we are frustrated at. “This patch is stupid”, is not really putting it in kinder words. You’re still saying something the company and/or “devs” has created is stupid, regardless if you direct the phrase to them or the patch itself. Both ways of saying it, is negatively loaded. If the word stupid were to scar them, we would have a lot of scarred people in this world, myself included after having done something that was stupid and being called stupid for it. There’s a difference from challenging someones intelligence by denoting them as stupid, over calling something that’s been done, as stupid. I’ve done stupid things, that doesn’t mean I’m intellectually challenged.

You can dress it up any way you like, if you’re displeased with the direction something is taking, e.g., a certain part of a patch, you will be negative in your feedback. If they can’t look past certain words and ways of phrasing the message, they are in the wrong line of business, that’s for sure. I’ve had far worse directed at me on a personal level, for things I weren’t even involved in and/or had any control over, when I worked for a different company in this industry, than any of the stuff I tend to see (or have ever seen to be quite honest) on these forums. This stuff is mild. You know what I did when people were lashing out and venting their frustrations in my direction? I took note of the underlying message, and didn’t take it as a personal attack.

In a dungeon, at least in our dungeons, you want to run from A to B the fastest you can, to deal incredible damage to one or more targets as quickly as possible. The ability to rush through things allows you to skip enemies. Why stealth when you can just have Stability and charge straight through enemy groups to the next boss? For speed, very few professions can do that, only one shines at it. If we’re talking equally skilled players.

It doesn’t matter that I dislike it, it doesn’t matter if someone don’t agree with it. It’s the community. The same way it asks for gear checks. We can’t change their views on it, because they aren’t technically speaking, wrong in their assumptions. I know my Mesmer is not as strong as a Warrior. I know my Time Warp is not all that helpful, as it ruins skill rotations by offsetting recharge periods. Portals aren’t needed, so what do I have to bring to the table? Interrupts? Yeah, I have plenty of those but one interrupt before the boss enemy goes on a immunity rampage, that pretty much lasts the rest of the 3 second long fight? I’m also slow, really slow. I can’t keep up. Never mind if I have Swiftness on, it does’t matter, I do not have the skills to propel myself forwards as fast as a Warrior can, nor a Thief. Those are the two kings of mobility. Sure, I can forwards-Phase Retreat with Staff, I have Blink.. that still is nothing compared to the mobility they got at their hands.

That’s where Warrior outshines the rest, and I’m not blind to seeing that. They are a Heavy using profession, with incredible damage, insane mobility allowing them to get from A to B quicker, with high health and good utility skills. They are the all-in-one toolkit for your dungeon needs, and this is why the dungeon runners have adopted them as their go-to profession. This leaves the rest of us feeling left out, out in the cold. If you’re not one of them, you’re not wanted. And sure, you can make your own groups, but those takes much longer to fill. This makes you not want to do dungeons, besides a lack of rewards, and as such, the metrics of dungeon-goers are not necessarily accurately representing those who would like to do dungeons. That’s what I was on about initially, before this turned into a discussion about other professions being just as good. Especially when taking a mediocre Warrior into consideration, next to a good/great other player of a different profession. A very valid comparison.

If my relative is doing something I see as being destructive to their lives, such as taking heavy drugs and/or doing crime, I will easily call them stupid for it and wish for them to change the direction they’re taking themselves. Now I’m not saying this patch relates to drugs, nor is it criminal, I’m just saying as an analogy, you can call your relative stupid, even though you love them. You do so because you love them. If it was John from TS, you don’t actually care. Let’s be honest here. Nobody cares about John from TS.

People are vocal about this because they see it as something negative for the game, for the thing they enjoy and love so much. For all the negative feedback, there is a positive side to it as well, the people complaining, are very much invested and in love with the product. Otherwise they’d just drop it and leave without saying a word.

I also think the majority of our little community of forum users here are rather civil overall. We may be calling a company stupid, but that’s the company, we’re not directly assaulting specific developers. “Oh, Colin! You.. just, you! Gosh darn your handsome smile! It’s distracting me from being mad at you! I hate you! Call me.. xoxo” —We are mostly all aware that these decisions are multiple individuals takes and iterations on an idea thought up by multiple people. Not one person is really to blame for something that we dislike. But you’d think someone would say “Isn’t this going to upset x, y or z”?

But yeah, I think although it seems like a weird thing to do, being negative and upset, does still in an underlying way show that we care. That we love the product, and perhaps a tiny bit the company with its handsome men (like Colin) and beautiful women (like Colin) that makes it what it is. It’s easier to see the negativity over the positive sides to something. The same way it’s easier to complain than it is to praise. If we’re not upset and/or “bored”, we don’t tend to use forums, we are busy playing. Praise tends to be more through word of mouth or when telling someone about how much you want them to try out the thing you’re excited for anyways. Or when they do something brilliant, like the Super Adventure Box. The forums was full of praise during the release of that.

But if your choice is good Warriors or a good mixed bag of professions, then why not take the good Warriors with their increased cleave damage and excellent mobility? Are we on the same page there? I’m not a Warrior, I don’t want full Warrior groups, the community running dungeons does, and they aren’t exactly wrong for it.

Your reasoning doesn’t get more sound when you’re comparing mediocre x to good/great y. What are you on about? Your not going to have a much better time with a mediocre mixed bag of professions over a mediocre group of Warriors. Warriors also have increased movement speed, allowing them to get to their cleave spots faster, clearing their content quicker. Simple. I’d also say that Warrior is one of the easier professions to get a grasp on, no offense to Warrior players. It’s more common to find a decent Warrior. They just need one guy to tell them where to stand for line of sight, and to press (a little bit more than) one button at a given time to melt stuff. That’s hardly difficult. It also doesn’t change that conditions, interrupts and support builds are borderline completely undesired and/or needed. It revolves around damage, and pretty much just that. I find this to be boring.

Rewards are in either case the same, regardless of your group composition, they’re rather bland. And the community, regardless of our perception, is very much focused on Warriors. The toxicity even goes as far as requesting a “gear check” these days (well, for a long time now really). It’s ridiculous for something which is so little a challenge after having been dumbed down since launch.

To note: I have 8 Legendary weapons, my weapon stats would hardly be a issue, I have multiple Ascended sets for various scenarios and builds. I also use food buffs in all content I do, PvE or WvW. I don’t get bothered by gear check requests, you could even say I get to “show off” on request, but I find them to be stupid and pointless. I refuse to do them.

You’re also bringing up Guild Wars, which thrived on having multiple roles. I’d say we weren’t forced into a trinity there, not fully anyways, but you wanted those interrupts. You wanted that healing source. You wanted your Boons. You wanted conditions just as much as you wanted someone spanking and body blocking someone in melee. Here we’re stuck with wanting damage, and pretty much just that. Perhaps a tiny bit of Boon support, mainly for Might stacking. Dungeons there were and still are more challenging, in my opinion. You’re pointing to a game that did dungeons far better than the next iteration did it. At least the way I see it.

I love the game. It has plenty of things going for it. The design of the world, is spot on brilliant. It’s such a meticulously detailed world. It’s beautiful. The combat is actually fun and engaging, once you unlock everything. It has the premise of allowing you to make a lot of interesting builds. Although sadly it usually boils down to one thing, damage, damage, damage. I personally enjoyed the stories we’ve gotten. They’re not going to win any rewards perhaps, but they have been entertaining me enough to be interested in the next part. Besides a few blunders like the Mordremoth name drop out of nowhere, I’ve enjoyed it all. I enjoy World vs. World, more so than sPvP, since I have more control over my stats. I do wish Borderlands weren’t just one map copy-pasted twice over with a few different names on the locations though. I enjoy general PvE. The game is great in many ways. But it also has several faults and issues. Overall feeling of being rewarded is one. I finished something, and I get Blue and Green items.. hardly a thing that gets my blood pumping.

This is why I voice my opinions at least, why I imagine most of us voice it. We love the game, and would hate to see it misled into its own demise. We want it to be all the more better for gamers, so that more players stick around, recruit more players, and as a result, earns ArenaNet more money, so they in turn can give us even more fun to be had. It’s a cycle that they don’t seem to understand at times. They need the veterans to be happy, or the new players are just going to leave as they realize we’re not. They can make the initial experience as great as they want. If they don’t fix what is causing players to leave as they each the end of the journey, they’re still going to lose players.

I don’t quite agree. No profession can really match the Warrior’s Hundred Blades in terms of cleaving damage. That’s simply not true. We’re talking insane damage bursts from one skill here. They also have pretty much the best mobility in the game (some argues thieves do, but I think they’re more on par if anything). They are simply put, the single most effective way of clearing out content in a dungeon setting. A controlled setting with very little challenge to it, which allows them to shine. It’s literally 2-3 second kills on practically every single boss within a dungeon these days. The dungeon-running community is basically based around this knowledge. They want their quick “rewards” out of a relatively boring and non-challenging setting, so they can actually get the rewards they want elsewhere with the coinage they earn.

I wouldn’t blame anyone for that. It’s not all that much fun, it’s not challenging, and the dungeons themselves are not really rewarding you with anything. I never found them interesting, because they don’t really provide me with anything I considered “neat” or “cool”. I didn’t like most of the sets, and after a while we got Ascended and their Exotics-stats were no longer interesting either. There’s very few unique and cool things that comes out of a dungeon as a drop. It’s basically, like so much else in this game, lacking on the rewards side.

Plus well, they need to figure out a way to make more interesting builds desired in this setting too. Like I said, why have a interrupter, when they can’t even interrupt a boss more than once before it dies, when the boss doesn’t even need you to interrupt it, because it melts in seconds to one professions skill? And no, I’m not saying “nerf” here.. I hope they don’t tread that path. I’m saying, find ways of making it interesting to bring a condition player, to bring someone with some support, to bring a interrupter. Perhaps even a tanky build. We’re on the doorstep of the trinity here, but everyone can do everything, is that so bad? Make it interesting, make it more engaging. Make it rewarding through drops and the ability to gain Ascended armor/weapons from dungeons as well (Hard Mode for that perhaps?).

Vayne.8563:

aliksyian.7642:

I’m pretty sure anet’s internal politics are a mess. I bet a lot of people working there would love to work on dungeons or other fun content, but their upper management won’t give them the go ahead. I don’t know how you fix that. Pool our money and buy out the company, maybe?

LMAO! Yes, I’m sure that would work.

But what do you do if you get into the company and find most people don’t run dungeons? I’m not saying they do or they don’t…but what would you do if that were the case?

My guess is that if more people ran dungeons, more work would be done on them, because it’s just logical.

It’s highly logical that not enough players, play dungeons. We’re not all playing Berserker-wearing Warriors, and if we’re not, we’re not really welcome. It’s a toxic part of the community quite honestly. But.. why blame them. It’s the efficient way. Nobody wants conditions, because it’s not as effective. Nobody really wants someone built into support, because it’s not required one bit. Who wants a interrupt Mesmer in Guild Wars 2? Bosses can’t be interrupted (not really anyways), trash mobs are too easy. It’s all about Hundred Blades, bae! We’re #1. ’Murica! I mean.. ’Arrior!

And well, there’s the rewards. Or lack of rewards perhaps. The dungeons aren’t all that rewarding, to me at least. There’s a few skins to be gotten, but why not bump them up to Ascended stats to make it more appealing? The end-rewards aren’t that exciting either, a bit of coinage pretty much. There’s no unique semi-rare/rare item that can only be obtained from doing a dungeon, well no, in some dungeons there are such items, but not all. A item that starts you on a quest to get something cool, like say a precursor. A item that has a unique look only obtained from this dungeon as a drop. A item that.. <add your own idea of fun rewards here>. If it’s not rewarding, why do it? Again, if you’re not a Warrior, you’ll be hard pressed even getting to do it, so there’s that too.

Ok, we can make our own groups, “all are welcome”, and they will over some time fill up. But it takes time, to just get it going, and you’re often ridiculed for not playing the efficient profession, or the most efficient builds. There’s simply no interesting builds in dungeons, and they’re not challenging enough to warrant such builds, nor do they allow for it with how the game is designed (e.g., interrupts are pretty pointless on a boss creature, when it goes immune for another 50 interrupts afterwards.. it’s such horrible game design choice that one, especially in a closed off environment such as a dungeon. I’m exaggerating, but you get my idea I hope). Address rewards and how it’s all revolving around one profession, and perhaps you’ll see more players doing dungeons.

Ironically, my low-level Thief alt (the fourth I’ve made) has a costume on from before this patch, which she can’t take off, because the Outfit part of the Wardrobe is locked for her now. Yup.. they thought these changes through. I do agree though, the new separation of things presented is nice, I just found it a bit funny I was stuck with a costume.

IndigoSundown.5419:

I doubt very much that the complaints of players who left the game after a very short time playing centered on rewards, at least the way you mean them.

A good chunk of my friends stopped playing around Lv.15-40. They felt like they didn’t get rewards early on. They asked, so I honestly answered how it functions at end-game. You are restricted to getting rewards from encounters once per day, with it resetting at 2 a.m. CET, and you are honestly mostly looking at greens and blues, with one guaranteed better reward.

When they asked about expansions, I explained how the Living Story worked (at the time), how it’s a good chunk of content churned out, but how it disappears and are gone. They liked the idea of frequent content updates, but not that it went away and couldn’t be played again. They also asked about the rewards from them, and I showcased a lot of the rewards I had gotten. Some of them they liked, most they discarded as stuff they didn’t care much for.

They complained about the Achievement Point rewards, how the weapon skins were just horrible. They saw the prices of precursors after seeing my collection of Legendary weapons, and were simply discouraged at even thinking about the idea of getting those.

Some I convinced to stay a bit longer, to give it a bit more time, but once they got to dungeons and felt the rewards being terrible, they just handed in the towel. In the broad picture, they looked at rewards and the content available, and just stopped, moving back to other MMO games. I’m about the only player left out of my circle of friends, who is still playing (not counting friends I’ve gotten through playing this specific game, that are perhaps still playing, although a lot has recently quit due to lack of content updates in areas such as World vs. World).

I still enjoy the game, but understand how the game can feel unrewarding. I perhaps have a extra bit of love for the game, because I played Guild Wars. It could be that which is keeping me around, the nostalgia. Although if they’re planning to destroy all evidence of the previous game, such as Old Lion’s Arch under the waters of Lion’s Arch.. I dunno, stuff like that really got me annoyed. (As a side-note: Why in the world did you destroy that? It was my first “Oh my gawd! Skweeee— It’s Lion’s Arch! I know this place! Wooooooo~ excitement!” in Guild Wars 2, and now it’s obliterated because you couldn’t put that darn machine a bit further to the other side of the map. You destroyed a landmark people can recognize from the old game and get excited over. Just.. why?)

Everyone has said that the combat was fun though. It just wasn’t rewarding, nor did it seem like it would get any more rewarding. Legit concerns which are somewhat true.

Gamers aren’t some unintelligent drivel that are unable to get information about how things are going to turn out later on. They may start to feel a certain way early on, maybe around Lv.15? Where are my rewards? Does my rewards get better later on? How much is a precursor, these legendaries look awesome. What content is there to do? They’ll ask fellow gamers, friends or strangers, they’ll read articles, forum posts, comments on websites about the game. They’ll watch videos on YouTube, they’ll look at streams over at Twitch. They are able to get the information, and will be able to make up their minds on if they find this to be worth their time. Sadly, for me, my friends went with “Why bother?” and quit. They just didn’t see the reason in leveling to end-game when there were practically no end-game for them to be had. There weren’t any rewards and the content available wasn’t really all that much to shout hoorah over. At least for them.

Recently I’m losing more and more of my in-game GW2 friends who enjoy WvW as their main venue, to other games. There’s hardly been any updates to WvW over the course of two years. I mean more in the sense of freshness, new maps. We got Edge of the Mists, but it’s.. a PvE map. At least it’s turned into one, with it not being a part of the match-ups. They’ve always felt their rewards are rather.. meager. And there not really being a incentive to win. Why bother? What do you get? Pride? What is pride going to get you in the long run of playing a video game? You want rewards. It all boils down to rewards.

I wonder if their interviews with players who quit, actually revealed how displeased mostly everyone is with the rewards in this game. Blues and Greens, are not rewarding. On top of that, we are prevented from doing something more than once in a 24-hour period, if we want any type of reward out of anyways, or rather the chance at a decent reward. There’s a distinct lack of rewards for harder encounters as well. Nobody really does Tequatl after it was made more challenging. And don’t get anyone started on the Triple Trouble of wurms, as practically nobody does that anymore at all. It’s encounters designed wrong, encounters who requires way too many players and that takes far too long a time to complete over any other world event that may be up at the time. At least there are a few unique drops in these encounters, but you can’t sell Ascended, nor do they look good, so the interest is dampened. They’re also extremely static. Take Shatterer as an example of how terrible most of these encounters really are; we are all, grouped up on its right hand side, with it pouncing and attacking straight ahead. It pays no attention to the hundred-man army killing it. It’s not dynamic, and it isn’t engaging. It’s ridiculous. Why isn’t it turning around, attacking us at its side? Why doesn’t it fly and land somewhere else nearby? Why is it so blatantly scripted? (That’s not to say you should kill off anyone doing anything by making it too complicated, or too difficult, but at least make it fun, and put some fun rewards in all these encounters who are practically Guild Wars 2’s version of raiding.)

This is where ArenaNet needs to work on things. Rewards. Not trying to make leveling into a reward by slowly unlocking things. Pretty much nobody has ever enjoyed leveling in a game because it unlocked more and more skills, or the ability to dye something… They endure it because they want to reach the highest level and expect the fun to be there, the end-game. I will give ArenaNet the compliment again of saying this was the first MMO game in which I found leveling to not be a drag, I actually really enjoyed it. But I never felt rewarded and I still don’t to this day. I got blues and greens, and this is what I mostly get to this day. Fun.. There’s also an excessive amount of Account Bound things that are either worth a few silver to a vendor and/or that I can’t even salvage. They take up space, so you’re given the choice of deleting your reward or simply having it take up space. I’ll ask as I have before, who wants to delete their reward, for nothing. Drag it out of their inventory, click confirm and poof, it’s gone. That is not rewarding, that’s discouraging. And who wants to sell their top tier items for a silver.. a silver! If it was because players deemed their value to be a silver, that’s different, over the game saying you can’t even try sell them to other players and the vendors are willing to grant you a measly silver for it, that’s just.. annoying. It doesn’t feel rewarding.

Again, Karma. Used to feel rewarding, you could buy Exotics, armor as you leveled up, you could salvage and vendor these things. Then we have one incident, of some group of lame players exploiting one little mistake you make with the cost of some Karma reward. And you go bonkers and make it impossible to sell and salvage them. Why is it that you have kept it like this for nearly two years now. Why is this not “fixed” yet? I have not purchased Karma gear as I leveled up since that day. I don’t like destroying my rewards with nothing in return.

Also, why do we have a single sPvP map with a new game mode added? One TDM map. One! Why is the Borderlands of World vs. World still a copy-paste. We have two maps, Eternal Battlegrounds and Borderlands. Edge of the Mist was and is a great map, but it’s not included in the matchup, so that hardly counts. It’s not like players PvP there anyways.. they run in circles avoiding each other to farm it like a PvE map. Why do we have only two new PvE maps (three if you count EotM), which aren’t even the size of the original maps, combined, added over the course of two years. You have a massive world to take from. It exists in Guild Wars: Prophecies, Factions, Nightfall and Eye of the North. We get one map that’s barely used, Southsun Cove, and one that is, well actually quite awesome, Dry Top, but that’s it though.

Over the course of two years, you have given us content, I’m not saying you haven’t. But where is all the content from the Living Story, Season 1. It’s gone, poof, it’s nowhere. You haven’t expanded your game. There’s hardly more content for a new player today, than there was a year ago. There is the problem. The game is stalling, it’s not rewarding, and you can only have fun for so long with the same toys provided to you. Player retention comes with rewards and new things to do. Players play for rewards. “Fun” is only rewarding for so long.

I think it was simply bugged initially (actually not working as intended), outside of WvW and towns. I see my Miniature much more often now, with very few cases having it being culled. Regardless however, I don’t think my Miniature should ever be culled for me. It’s nice if the message states it is culled for others though, so I don’t look like a weirdo if I talk about my crow friend that’s not there for other players. Perhaps make it so that a party see each others Miniatures even if they should normally have been culled?

I do also still dislike that Miniatures are taken out of the market cycle. There’s no longer a collection around them at that point. In the sense that you collect and you trade. There were already a lot of Account Bound Miniatures, with only a few making sense to bind (CE and HoM ones), but at least you had the ability to “Trade you x and y for a z”. I find such player interactions to be fun. The main problem was that the Trading options from Guild Wars are nowhere to be found in this game, and I think it could sorely need it. Even if we got Mail and Trading Post systems. I still want to feel like I’m face to face trading with someone now and again.

Also, by making Miniatures unavailable, you are hampering your potential to earn real money, ArenaNet. Collectors, don’t want to collect something they can’t fully collect. There’s no point in collecting Miniatures for a lot of players, if you’re unable to “catch them all”. Account Bound status on a bunch of them, as well as the limited availability for some, and some outright being near impossible to get (e.g., the debacle you created with Mini Mr. Sparkles, which caused myself, and others, to stop giving you money for Miniatures), only hurts your potential of cashing in on those of us that actually collects/collected. I don’t think you’re always being all that financially clever when it comes to a lot of these things that you do. This saddens me. You are taking so many wrong choices when it comes to earning yourself money, and then you look at other ways of pushing players into making you money, again the wrong ways. You need someone to slap your financial direction team, they are doing a terrible job quite honestly. Rule of thumb, ask yourself, will this negatively impact someone that may be giving us real money, causing them to stop doing so? If yes, look for a different idea/iteration, as you don’t want to make players who already give you money willingly, to stop giving you money. PS: You did it again with the Mini Llama. You obviously don’t learn from your mistakes.

By opening the map and right-clicking on a tag, you can opt to join the squad, unless it’s full. This will hide all other tags. Now, this is a temporary solution, but one that works. Basically, this is a new thing, and people who were informed of the change and purchased it for 100 Gold are just having fun showing off their colors. Anyone that already had Commander tags on multiple characters, who didn’t even get refunded the difference, are over the whole idea of showing off the tag. It’ll die down, it’s not going to be Skittles on the maps for that much longer.

I don’t think you’re seeing the bigger picture of what you’re doing here, ArenaNet. You are locking content away. I mean, I can still place myself in the new player shoes. I remember I was a bit confused at first, I wasn’t quite sure where to go. Nor did I know what my buttons did the first time I went into the Downed State. But your philosophy of telling me that I can simply pick any direction, run for a bit, and as a result, adventure will find me—helped me get through the leveling experience. It was amazing, I’ve never had this much fun leveling in a MMO before, and I’ve played my fair share. Please take this as the compliment it is. Sadly, this isn’t really the case anymore.

You’re for one limiting players more than you did when I leveled up. But you’re hardly improving on anything. You’re not teaching them the fundamentally important things. Yes, such as dodging. The new tutorial for that is relatively alright, but could do with a bit better explaining. It should be in the starter instance as well. Downed State, there’s no real time given to a player for learning this, so you learn through multiple encounters with the state as-is, slowly taking in what each button does each time you get downed, while you wait to die as you read the tooltip(s). You simply needed to, forcefully down a player, taking them step by step through the skills of the state, pausing the action, nothing hitting them, without a timeout period. Then once things have been explained, put them through the test of using the state against an enemy, cheering them on for being awesome once they rally. The game could do with a few tutorials. But of course, please make it possible to skip them.

You are holding the players hands, way too much. There’s no excitement in exploration when you are at all times presented with an arrow telling you where to go. The whole idea of, pick a direction and adventure will find you, is lost. You’re told where to go. Now, that doesn’t mean you have to follow it, but as a new player, you probably think that’s the ideal way to go about things and will do just that. You’ve in a sense robbed them of the exploration sensations and joy this game can provide.

Why not provide this compass initially to send the players to their very first heart? Explain how hearts work in detail, how there’s in pretty much all cases more than one way to finish the quest it represents. Then point out that near every heart, there will usually be events to find, which will even contribute to the nearby hearts completion, directing them to a nearby event and its tutorial. Take them from that to their first story instance, explain how this works. And so on forth. The game needs tutorials, not for you to be locking options away. It’s not rewarding to see that you’ve “unlocked” the ability to use dyes. That you are allowed to be rewarded for visiting a Skill Challenge and/or Vista you might already have found. Something rewarding would be to get 5 dyes unlocked at some level. To get an appropriate Rare weapon for your mid-range character with a selection of Sigils to customize it with. You know, rewards that players feel rewarded by. Another way to increase the feeling of rewards for this game, is to stop making it so we can’t salvage our Karma things. I know it was exploited early on, but for crying out loud, it’s almost two years after the incident! It’s time to make Karma rewards feel a bit more rewarding again. To make it not feel like spending Karma on gear as you level up is a waste. Because who likes to destroy their rewards when they outlevel them, with nothing in return. Salvaging, that’s different.

You really need to think a bit more about things you do, before you do them. You had plans of removing ranks in sPvP, because you were going to implement a Seasonal Ladder system to this game mode. The reasoning for removing ranks, was “… to give PvP players ways to set goals and work towards them …”, by.. uh, removing something which was already a goal for players. You have great intentions, of that I’m sure, but this outrage should have been obvious. If you want to retain players, you need to make the game feel rewarding, not by locking things away, but by actually letting us do and get rewarding things. A good start would be to allow us to salvage/vendor our Karma items. The new collection system already helps, I’m excited about killing mobs, certain events and dungeons. I have over 4000 hours played and I’m excited.

If I was to put your new player experience into a picture, it would probably be something like what’s going on in this screenshot I took yesterday, it’s just confusing.

I’ve seen what a VIP system does to an actual F2P title, not a B2P title like Guild Wars 2, in the western market. It reduced the player base. Basically, over the course of a year, everyone knew mostly everyone of our players. There were very few players coming into the game. It lowered our revenues (and we were pestered by the suits who has no clue at all about the western market to add even more damaging mechanics from the eastern market, with the goal being to increase revenue from the cash shop). I sure hope they are good on their word of never adding things like this here, that they restrain themselves, because if they don’t, I fear that’s the end of Guild Wars 2 as we know it. It’ll see a major decrease in players, not a gain. And although that doesn’t mean they won’t see players in the game, they will be losing out financially. I’ll see history repeat itself like with the game I used to work for. It’d take a miracle for that to not happen. Especially since this game costs money up front.

I’ll just have to trust they are good on their statement from months past, that those things was reserved for China only, and would never find their way here. Then again, they did say we’d see Legendary trinkets by the end of 2013. There was talk about this Precursor Scavenger Hunt.. they say a lot of things.

Hamfast.8719:

As some people have pointed out, you could have an entire zone filled with nothing but Rangers, and they aren’t going to remove their pets due to excessive strain on the servers.

Upcoming patch; All Rangers and their pets are now hidden from other players if/when the population of a given map rises above a certain threshold. If you find yourself dying unexpectedly from seemingly nothing, please check the new and improved Combat Log to see if it was one of our invisible players friends. This mechanic has also been added to Necromancers who uses pets, as well as to Mesmers, every time they create a clone and/or Phantasm.

Balthazzarr.1349:

I’m still trying to find these stupid things….

One’s outside The Grove, the other two are outside the Black Citadel.

I try to be polite, but that doesn’t mean I don’t get bitter at some things they do, especially when it’s something they’ve apologized for in the past, then do again because they forgot. I get bitter, because I see where it’s going, so many of these things are easy to predict, if you are even slightly in touch with the general western gamer and how they react to x and y. But they are sometimes seemingly blatantly blind to it themselves. It’s financially stupid in the cases I get bitter over something, for them, not me. For me, they ruin some fun, for themselves, they lose money. It’s like they have nobody there to tell them when enough is enough, when a great idea is turning sour. Or if they do, that person needs to be given a different position, because they clearly are out of touch with being able to put themselves into a few different scenarios and to reign in the chaos.

Ultimately, if the person on the company side can not handle some harsh language and anger directed towards them, they are in the wrong line of business. I worked at a ISP for a years time in the past, and I got my skin full of complaints, cusses, anger and other lovely things, for things that were not my fault what so ever. I was there for Support, I didn’t sit in the server room plugging out someones cable for the fun of it. I know that was not because they were angry at me, but with the situation, the company, something else. Which is why I would be calm and polite in my response to the customer, and eventually they would calm down so I could help them. That’s how you’re supposed to act on the business side. And ignoring complaints aren’t going to make them go away, it’ll make people see you as another company that does not listen, that does not care. You can’t expect human beings to not get angry, to not get bitter or jaded. The people on the business side too sit and cuss at a video game every so often (as long as they’re gamers). The fact that we get worked up, is positive, it means we do care, no matter how much we say we don’t, since we are here, expressing our discontent, because we still want to love the product.

I also think they should add “Flick someone at ArenaNet on the nose” as a Gem Store thing, with the ability to specify what you are mad about, and then they can go flick the person responsible (not that we need to know) on the nose. They’d probably make so much money off of that.

It’s not hard to see what their aim here is. It’s to make players destroy Miniatures. Now please.. think about what cause that has. Right, a drainage of Miniatures available in the market, with prices skyrocketing. This leads to players spending real money, in the Gem Store to get packs of Miniatures, be it to try save money from buying, or to sell and make a profit. This is obviously their tactic here. This is what they hope will come from this.

The same applies to the Black Lion Weapon Skins. They want to make more people spend money on Black Lion Keys. Especially those of us who have grabbed a single weapon now and again, but had no real interest in getting the whole freaking set of them. I really like the collectible categories that involves in-game stuff, but these collectible achievements that is based around real world transactions are just making me annoyed however. Especially seeing the same exact Miniature ones added as a duplicate, with the same exact title tied to them. Only this time it’s to destroy the items, to take them out of the market cycle. We can’t have people buying Miniatures and selling them afterwards of course? The people who may be “collecting” achievements (not AP, but the actual achievements) but have absolutely no interest in their greedy Miniature practice.

ArenaNet has proven a few times they can’t be trusted to make it possible to maintain a complete collection anyways. First Mini Mr. Sparkles, which got me to stop collecting, which caused several collectors to get frustrated and had an outrage over it, then they do it again.. with the Mini Llama.. I’m so glad I stopped collecting and supporting them with real money, because as I said during their Mini Mr. Sparkles frustration, what collector would want to have a impossible to (reasonably) complete collection? (Without any communication, some months later, after having skipped 2-3 packs, they did of course make Sparkles available if you purchased at least 50€ worth of Gems during that month, but yeah.. that was a bit late, huh? And now they’ve done the same thing again with that Mini Llama.. so yeah, my lowered respect and trust in them is warranted, to me, these days.)

The obvious cash-grab implementations of this patch are as annoying as that ridiculous GET MORE GOLD message plastered in our faces on the Trading Post now. Another reason to look at this entire update as some sort of grand plan of making players spend more money, without any care for how it makes them appear. Like some grind-fest F2P title, e.g., from that company everyone loves to hate for their greed, or any tacky cheap mobile app with advertisements all over it.

Seriously, someone at ArenaNet needs to talk back to the people pushing these things through from the eastern market. This is the western market, things like this does not get accepted here. We rather start talking about how greedy you are, quit your game and advice players to stay away from it. A game that actually depends a bit on reputation. It’s not a Free to Play title. It’s a Buy to Play title. There’s no testing to see for yourself in this, and with a horrible reputation, the sales of the game will decline, that much is given.

Honestly, like it or not, conditions are a part of being a Mesmer. It was back in Guild Wars as well, when hexes was our thing, and those being conditions too. Mesmer’s are very much a hybrid profession. We’re likely meant to deal damage through both physical attributes, but also through our conditions. It’s in everything we do, and by balancing between them, you will get stronger for it.

It’s perfectly alright to want to gravitate more towards the physical damage, but you can’t really escape the conditions. They’ll be there in practically everything you do. Trying to avoid them completely is almost like trying to avoid being a Mesmer.

I don’t think it feels any more right to play conditions on a Necromancer. But I wouldn’t focus all my energy on purely conditions as a Mesmer either. Just don’t forget that we were a condition class originally, it’s not like that’s going against our profession.

I sure didn’t see Assassin’s as an option when I completed the Style collectible that rewarded a Ascended Accessory that allows you to select your own stats. Was a bit disappointed.

It’s insane how much conditions I’m stacking up now. Makes the hybrid in me very happy, my average output went from 6764 damage per second to 9478. And that’s only from the condition side of the build. My targets are practically melting.

We can’t even refresh the listings while deciding on placing a purchase order or not. This new Trading Post is a step backwards for me, more so than a step forwards. It also crashed the client quite a few times.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Absconditus.6804:

Collections for Black Lion weapons. Yeah, because it’s reasonable to collect 16 skins that you need to gamble on to obtain reasonably, from Black Lion Chests. Again, they want you into the Gem Store. Not all collections added are all bad, but some of these are absolutely making me loathe whoever it is that’s behind them. It’s screaming greed, and it’s making the game look so cheap and tacky, like a full-fledged Free-to-Play title. Only difference is I paid up front for this one.

OR… you can buy them from the TP with Gold. No RNG necessary.

Note how I wrote “reasonably”? Paying tens of thousands of Gold to collect these skins is not reasonable, is it? How are you going to amass it? Clicking on BUY MORE GOLD from the Trading Post? Then again, spending thousands of Euros on keys for your Black Lion Chests, in hopes of getting some claim tickets, is not really all that reasonable. In either case, it’s pretty unreasonable and these Collections should just not have been implemented.

Note that there are 16 skins per most of these sets. There’s also a good number over 10 sets in total, and although some doesn’t have all 16 weapon skins, most do. The reward for collecting all of the sets? Around 80 claim tickets.. guess what that gets you? Roughly one set that’s not the new kid on the block, which costs 5 tickets per skin. This collection category is so much “fun”! Oh wait, no, it’s frustrating, demotivating and annoying.

This is as obvious a cash grab as a Season Pass for DLC, pre-purchasable before a game is even released. It’s the kind of thing that baffles me that people will defend and buy into.

Whoever had this idea, is working with one thing in mind, greed and maximizing profits without any care for the players. Trust me, it doesn’t work like this, ArenaNet, you will rather end up losing players, and get the type of reputation some other larger F2P Korean-based company has.. I shouldn’t even need to name and shame, everyone knows what company I’m talking about. This is clearly about getting the player(s) to spend money in the Gem Store. You are no longer able to progress the old miniature collecting achievements by simply obtaining them, you must destroy them, take them out of the market rotation, create a larger demand for them. Never mind if you have no interest in collecting them of course, but rather in the achievements themselves as a different kind of collection. No, now you’re forced into buying them and destroying them, rendering it impossible to just buy and re-sell afterwards. Why? Clearly because ArenaNet is getting more and more greedy, and this is a tactic to forcefully send players into the Gem Store.

You see it through the entire update. BUY MORE GOLD is plastered on the Trading Post like some tacky mobile application. All it does, is take you to the currency converter tab, as if we’re too stupid to click that on our own. Oh and of course the Set I and II packs for the Miniatures are now magically back.

Collections for Black Lion weapons. Yeah, because it’s reasonable to collect 16 skins that you need to gamble on to obtain reasonably, from Black Lion Chests. Again, they want you into the Gem Store. Not all collections added are all bad, but some of these are absolutely making me loathe whoever it is that’s behind them. It’s screaming greed, and it’s making the game look so cheap and tacky, like a full-fledged Free-to-Play title. Only difference is I paid up front for this one.

PS: It’s so over the top stupid how I see my old Miniature Collector achievements, for both Set I and II, completed, but then exact duplicates of the achievements, with the same title that I’ve unlocked even(!), below them as incomplete. It makes so much sense! Disgusting, ArenaNet, absolutely disgusting. I’m not even sure there’s much respect left for the great company that brought Guild Wars and its expansions into the market. Perhaps a tiny bit, but you’re doing a great job in making me lose it.

ArenaNet has gotten slower and slower with recent patches. So I’d expect it to come no sooner than at least 3-4 hours from now, probably later.

I’m already using Maim the Disillusioned in my hybrid build, which I’ve based around the idea of full out punishment, even if I’m being defensive, so not much will be changing for me. I’ll only get stronger, and I can’t complain about my ability to fight as-is. I’m already looking at stacks of 14 Torment on single targets, sometimes more, sometimes a little less, but I’m consistently at stacks above 10. This will just get easier now with the changes, 12 seconds of Torment on all my Shatters, even when I Distortion to avoid damage—Well, cheers ArenaNet! My Staff clones will also be better, so there’s that too.

On a non-Mesmer related note, I do look forwards to toying around a little bit with Spirit Weapons on Guardian. I always wanted to use them, but they were always so.. not that good, in the past. They look a bit more interesting now. Got to see if they are potentially a pain to fight now, so I can counter them on Mesmer, heh. Same reason I’ll likely hop on to all my characters, trying out changes and alterations to builds.

Mgorem.1038:

They are all phantasms except for one! Spot me!

The one that used Mass Invisibility to bug the Phantasms to look solid. The one that moves like a human, not a AI. The one attacking at a faster rate than the Phantasms. Did I win?

I think it’s good practice to at least incorporate a few shatters, whatever your playstyle is. Take Cry of Frustration as an example when thinking about being conditions-oriented, by using that, you can add some more condition damage to your build. While it’s recharging, you can summon and have your clones and Phantasms deal damage and apply conditions further. It’s a good idea to not shatter your Phantasms before it’s ready to be summoned again however, save them for when your shatter(s) are on cooldown periods. And learn to use Distortion, it can be a lifesaver. Don’t be hesitant to blow up your clones if you can save yourself from dying by shattering a Distortion.

Vella’s going through new looks so often lately. I think she’s settled down on a bit of a mischievous and wicked look now though. Hardly ever see anyone use the Mesmer masks, so I wanted to use one of those for once.

On the note of Vigor, both as Guardians and Mesmers we were able to maintain a 100% upkeep of the Boon, without too much difficulty. I guess it was a warranted balance change.

Oh, grow up. Did you just take your own advice here and test it? Guess what, I am currently logged in playing, tabbing out once in a while to read the forums because I’m not doing anything specific, and I did just perform the tests again to double check before I wrote what I wrote. Did.. you? It sure doesn’t seem like it.

I tested auto attack stacks from Staff and Greatsword clones again, in a condition oriented build, with varying amounts of Critical Chance, even going as high as 70%, which is way too high in a condition centered build, and was rather stepping on it being a hybrid build, there’s a difference. I had to swap in some pieces of Assassin’s to reach that and my Condition Damage suffered for it. Greatsword clones were consistently creating on average 1 stack of Bleeding. Once in a while, two, but the same goes for Staff clones. They weren’t better than one another on that front, though the Staff clones were producing Might and Fury on me in the process. With Illusionary Elasticity being fixed, getting an additional bounce is going to help these clones further.

You see, unlike perhaps you, I don’t tend to pull data out of the thin air. And keep in mind that you’re typing here in the forums as well, so you could take your own advice there. Do the tests and don’t just write random facts with no factual basis beyond what your gut feeling is, because at least that’s what it seems like, since you’re not presenting any sort of numbers and such things as an average, only “this works better in my opinion”. If you’ve gotten your stance through actual testing to see what each individual parts of your setup is doing, then you have my apologies, you’ve tested it. If it’s purely from having played with x and y, then no, that’s not testing, that’s playing without knowing what your specific tools are doing. Greatsword clones attacks without delay.. pfft. When presented with counters to your arguments, such as actual uses for Mass Invisibility in a team oriented setting, you’re saying the other person is spewing garbage and should go do tests, unlike yourself, because you’re above testing. Yeah, you come off as a brilliant Mesmer. That’s not to say you’re not a good player, you very well may be and I probably think you are. But really now, you shouldn’t preach and say someone should go do their tests, that they shouldn’t be on the forums and should spend their time testing instead, since according to you, they obviously haven’t, when you are clearly here yourself and don’t exactly seem to be doing any tests at all. How is it useful to provide false information? You didn’t even know the Staff clones attack slightly faster, did you? I’d take a guess you had no idea about the actual delay between each attack rotation? Perhaps I’m wrong. You said the Greatsword clones have no delay however. That’s not helping, that’s actually misinforming, be that because of communication errors or lack of knowledge.

Note: As I wrote before, I am not saying Greatsword is a worse weapon, it’s as I said, a different weapon. Both are good. Both can be used for condition builds. But you play with them differently. In the end, it’s different opinions and preferences. I prefer Staff in my condition-oriented (hybrid) builds, not because it’s so much more defensive, but it’s actually one of the things that allows me to chase runners with forwards-going Phase Retreats, and a good source of Might and Fury. You may prefer Greatsword, that’s awesome, and it works for you. Some other person may be all about using both. That works very well also and all the more power to them. I was foremost pointing out that Greatsword clones, do not attack without delay, and do not stack any better Bleeds than a Staff clone.
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For the fun of it, here’s the kind of Bleed stacks you can reach with 3 Staff clones and auto-attacks. That’s not counting taking one out for an iDuelist which on average adds 5 stacks. That there is also with a bit of a messed up combination of gear, and it’s basically a sub-optimal setup in that screenshot because I was testing these things. The Crit Chance is at only 39% (no Fury) and the Condition Damage is at a measly 1062. Still, this is before Illusionary Elasticity is fixed. I’ve also added a screenshot with 3 Greatsword clones (and auto-attacks, but that doesn’t exactly add Bleeds), and though they were consistently at a worse number, often dipping below 10, they can reach high stacks as well. Both are good for Conditions. On one hand, the GS attacks won’t be adding Burning though, which is another source of good condition damage. Of course, in either case, they are not going to be as easily stacking up the conditions when it comes to PvP. These screenshots were purely taken for the fun of looking at high stacks from clones and auto-attacks only.

Oh, I’m sorry almighty zaxon, you must clearly have tested it out extensively since you stated that Greatsword clones attack without delay. Oh wait, they don’t. There’s a 3 and roughly 3/4 of a seconds period between each cycle, including that 1 seconds delay between each attack rotation that all clones have. The same applies to Staff clones, although they attack ever so slightly faster at roughly one attack every 3 seconds. Who’s talking garbage here? By all means, go and test these things for yourself, I did so well over a year ago.

In your written example above, Staff is even superior for crying out loud. It has no penalty for being up close, unlike the Greatsword, which greatly reduces the damage it produces from auto attacks. A Staff clone can be generated point blank, guaranteed to be the target you want without there being any penalty to it. And Staff auto-attack is also adding to Bleeds, Burn and the Might and Fury stacking, and being close, is sort of needed if you want to get those bounces to hit you. Again, how are Greatsword, better, in a condition oriented build. All I’m seeing here, is a clone that provides less condition potential on average. Why I said.. try it out. Only the clone. See how many stacks it is contributing over everything else you’re doing. The Pistol Phantasm is contributing far greater stacks than a Greatsword clone. The Greatsword clone, is not a great source of Bleeds, unless you run full Assassin’s and have 100% Critical Chance, which would make the whole idea moot, since your Bleed damage would be abysmal at best.

It’s perfectly alright to use Greatsword, but it’s not a better weapon for conditions. It’s a different weapon. It’s more offensively structured, sure, but there are defensive sides to that weapon as well. The Knockback is one, as is the Cripple from the Phantasm. You also didn’t answer if you meant that taking Decoy, Veil and Mass Invisibility should automatically mean you’re a PU player, even though I gave you reasonable reasons as to why you carry them without it being for PU what so ever. But never mind that, that’s just garbage of course.

You can play Torch offensively, breaking the Stealth as soon as it’s used, though Stealth is by nature defensive, so.. yeah, if you want to use Torch, you’re using a defensive-styled weapon. The Phantasm is also defensive, it applies Confusion, a condition to make players not attack you (in theory) and Retaliation on yourself, which has the same purpose. The damage will come naturally after a short delay even if you break the Stealth should you so choose however. It’s our only Blast Finisher as well, should you be using it for that purpose. I’m not to say you can’t, perhaps you have great synergy with someone by timing it.

Decoy is a Stun Break, you use it if you get zapped in the noggin. That is defensive play at its core, so yeah, you take that for defensive purposes. Otherwise, you can use it to Stealth and re-position yourself, or to create a quick clone. There’s some versatility to it.

Veil is entirely based on being a defensive skill, be that if you wish to carry a Light Field to Combo Retaliation from, or for the Stealth purpose in a solo and/or group scenario. No matter how you look at it, it’s defensive. So yeah, if you wish to carry Veil, you’re taking it for defensive purposes. Same deal with Mass Invisibility. But really now, what other Elites do we really have that’s tied to our profession, that’s even remotely a better option? Moa? A single-target skill that lets your target dash away while evading. Time Warp? A skill that completely messes up skill rotations that players may have? I personally tend to run Reaper of Grenth as a Human, but that’s not a Mesmer Elite. If I was tied to using Mesmer skills only, I’d likely go for Mass Invisibility, it’s defensive, and it has the shortest recharge period.

And are you implying that because you’d use Decoy, Veil and Mass Invisibility, you must obviously be automatically forced into using Prismatic Understanding? Because that’s being short sighted and if there’s one thing I hate seeing in other Mesmers, it’s that. Veil, is a supportive defense for an entire World vs. World zerg of players. It allows players to get in close to enemy players without being the direct target of skills. Personally, I don’t find Veil to be all that “required”, but hey, it’s something other professions wants, so I don’t mind tossing it into my bar now and again when it’s asked for. Decoy, is a Stun Break, it also has Stealth for slipping away should you be the target of a harassing squad (very likely, Mesmers gets singled out quickly), and it creates a clone. Mass Invisibility, awesome for saving your buddy and/or buddies who has been downed and are about to get stomped. It lasts long enough to in pretty much all cases get your buddy up from the floor to continue fighting and preventing the enemy team from rallying. None of that was to gain Boons from Prismatic Understanding.

And let’s be fair here, unless you have 100% Critical Chance, you are likely looking at a single stack of Bleed from each Greatsword clone on average. By all means, go test it out on some PvE enemies. Create a single clone and see how many stacks it can produce for you. Then do the same with a Staff clone. The Greatsword clone is hardly any better than a Staff clone that can apply two stacks at a given time. Staff clones can even provide Burning, which is a far stronger condition. They additionally are a source of Fury. Both weapons are equally good at stacking Might, though I reckon with the IE fix, Staff will win that war. The Staff Phantasm will do severely higher damage if the target has a number of conditions on it, more so in a offensive Power build, though the Greatsword Phantasm can hit multiple targets and does not rely on the target(s) having conditions. Staff has a Leap Finisher, the absolutely awesome Chaos Armor, and a Ethereal field that allows for such awesomeness to be created not only upon yourself, but other allies as well, even by the Mesmer, with proper used timing of the Torch. In synergy with Immobilize and Stuns, it can be really damaging to the enemy player(s) caught in it as well. Greatsword on the other hand has a very useful Boon strip and a Knockback that allows you to push players off of cliffs and/or out of such things as a Shadow Refuge. They are both good weapons. One is a bit more defensive, but is hardly worse as an option for offensive support. You can also carry both, so there’s no reason you can’t have the best of both worlds, combined.

The rule of thumb that clones attack with roughly 1 seconds delay between each cycle, still applies to Greatsword clones, so what do you mean by no cooldown? And a lot of people use Staff because it’s defensive in its nature, not necessarily because the build they run is. The bolts are also a great source of Might and Fury, something that can’t be said about Greatsword clones.

Honestly, who cares if Joe or Mary wants to play using Prismatic Understanding? I agree to it being one of the “easier” ways to play. Or, dare I say cheap. But you know what. I see cheap builds being used by all professions, all the time. And, every profession has “that one build”. It doesn’t bother me if someone playing Mesmer wants to use our version of such a build, when every Thief, Warrior, Elementalist, Engineer, Necromancer, Guardian and Ranger runs around with their versions of flavor builds.

Personally, I don’t get mad over seeing Mesmers do anything. Because, we, are the coolest most awesome things to ever grace the battlefield. No matter how we play, we look absolutely brilliantly awesome. Those other professions got nothing on our grace in battle. Keep fighting, Mesmers. Enjoy the builds and way of playing that works for you. When I see you in the battlefields, it’s always a delight to watch.

Fay.2357:

I said this in another thread at some point, but I’ll say it again here.

Signet of midnight makes no sense. It’s a pbaoe instant blind. It’s also a stunbreak. If paired with the trait, it’s also an invuln.

So, if you blind your target, you don’t need the stunbreak. If you need the stunbreak, it means you already got hit, the blind isn’t super useful. If it’s an invuln, then you don’t need the blind OR the stunbreak.

Yes, there are situations where multiples of its uses can be helpful. However, that doesn’t make it any more cohesive in these non-niche situations.

I don’t see why you would use the active when not needing a Stun Break. If I need the Stun Break, it means I got hit by something that disabled me. I sure wish enemies would stop with that and not try to follow up with another attack or two. If all they wanted was to disable me and then to run off collecting flowers, I’d.. I don’t even. That’d be amazing?

What’s perhaps not as amazing, is to trait it for 1s of Distortion when using the active. I’ll agree to that. Though it can have its uses too. The signet on its own however, I think is alright. I don’t think it “doesn’t make sense”. You break yourself out of a situation that typically leads to something hitting you hard, while at least attempting to avoid it by blinding your adversaries in a 360 range radius around you (a bit better than Point Blank). That is a nice combination in my opinion. It’s the shortest recharge signet we got as well.

The Boon duration increase isn’t terrible either, although it’s not necessarily great, considering 10% is a rather meager increase on our Boons unless you’re using it in a Boon-oriented build. It’d at least bring it up to 40% with 6 points invested in Chaos. A tree that has access to a few ways of generating Boons when you think about it. Some random ways and some non-random ways, in either case, they’re still ways. And no, that doesn’t mean we should take PU, haha. Unless you want to of course. I don’t judge anyone if they want to use it, that’s their choice.
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[ My view of our signets ]

Signet of Ether, I don’t like that the passive heal is completely non-existing without having Illusions up. I would like to see it gain a very minor stream of health going even without Illusions being present. The active from it is very nice.

Signet of Domination, I think is in a decent place. It can boost some condition damage, and it’s a Stun should you want to have more interrupts at your hands. 45 seconds on the recharge may be a wee bit too much for my taste granted, but it’s a good passive/active setup.

Signet of Illusions, is the only one of the signets which does not make much sense. To me at least. As has been said, you have a signet that increases the health of our clones, but that has an active revolving around killing the clones more. It’s also got a minute and thirty seconds recharge time, which I find to be simply way too long. I understand the power in it, as it can allow for 3 Mind Wracks in a fairly short time, if combined with Illusionary Invigoration and “allowing” yourself to take damage. But that’d be a very one-trick pony kind of setup, with reduced utility for long periods of time between each burst. I think this one should be re-designed. Either flavor it more towards shatters, or clone survival not both in one.

Signet of Inspiration, perfectly alright signet. I guess it would be nice to rather have it as a movement increasing passive as suggested in the opening post. There’s currently 3 of 7 professions who does not have a signet with such a functionality (Engineer’s have none). Warrior, Guardian—the two Heavy users—and Mesmer. I don’t mind how it’s random Boon application however. It’s unique, and fits well with the great active of copying your Boons to your allies.

Signet of Midnight, I actually like it for what it does. If you missed my views on it, read the post from the start, I somewhat explained it up top.

PS: Kitten the kitten of the kitten kitten kitten because kitten kitten even if you write proper english. Yay for kitten system. It’s kitten kitten kitten and some more kittens added to it. Did I get the kitten out of me now? Meow.

Don’t forget that Signet of Midnight is a instant-cast Stun Break with an Unblockable AoE 5-target Blind. You can pair it well with Blurred Inscriptions, if you wish to try doing something with that.

Doni.6095:

… that other one I can’t find that inflicts several conditions when using an elite.

You mean the Superior Rune of the Krait?

Simonoly.4352:

I do roll my eyes when I see other Mesmers trying to stack swiftness with Temporal Curtain. Although it’s perfectly possible that this “feature” is not as widely known as I thought.

Some Mesmers will throw it down to try help people that may be falling behind in WvW though, since you know, they already have the Swiftness as they’re in the pack, so why not help out those that are slightly too far behind, losing their Swiftness. Just in defense of some Mesmers at least, haha.

You honestly don’t need that much condition cleansing on your own, unless you’re fighting another condition Mesmer or multiple condition sources. Outnumbered fights are outnumbered fights though, you’re likely going to lose unless they’re bad. But technically he can just go for 4 points in Domination instead, for boon stripping like he does currently. He’s got support taking care of cleansing for him normally you say. You also got a block, you got some stealth and you got Distortion, as well as Daze and well, you can dodge. Note how your condition damage would be well above 2000 as well, so your conditions, are hurting really bad. We’re talking Bleeds, Burn, Torments and Confusions in most cases, with Poison showing up once in a while from C.Storm. If you mean to get a Doom Sigil for Poison to affect heals, an optional effective way is to actually use the Pistol/Diversion. You know, interrupts. Just because you’re shatter, doesn’t mean you can’t be an annoying semi-lockdown player as well, right? Withdraw is hard to interrupt granted, but thieves are our natural predators anyways.

The whole idea of Mirror Images is to create a really quick follow-up shatter and/or for the “shi—— I need Distortion” moments (with the bonus being that it applies conditions as you shatter). It’s also another stun breaker. I just saw him running with basically no condition cleansing as-is in the video, so I figured why mess with that all that much.

You’re saying your proposed build would do more damage, but you’ve taken damage out of it to get even more defenses in an already very defensive gear setup. Your Phantasms are no longer hitting 50% critical by default. They need Fury to hit that. This means a good source of Bleeds, your iDuelist, has the potential to hit far less crits and you’re not going to see 4-6 stacks of Bleeds on average from one salvo of shots fired. You no longer punish at all on your enemies killing your clones/Phantasms, so that’s something they can do for free. Cripple tends to be enough to discourage some players from touching them once they notice it’s punished and if you spread your illusions out a bit. If you’re going into Chaos, you may as well get DD. I also don’t see the point of lowering Staff CD with.. CD, heh. The really useful 2 skills on Staff are already on low cooldowns, your auto-attack and Phase Retreat. The other 2 very useful skills, are no matter going to be taking a while to cool down. 28s is better than 35s, but marginally so. The goal is to have people dead before 28 whole seconds has passed anyways, right?

I do see the Doom Sigil potentially adding to the damage though, it’s 6 seconds of Poison after all. But it lowers the damage on Torments, Confusions, Bleeds and Burn in the process of using it instead. Your shatters are also hitting for a bit less in your setup. As are your block and the general power-attribute parts of the skills you use. We’re not talking huge numbers, it’s about 100 less Power and 100 less Condition Damage, but that does add up too in moderately high stacks from multiple sources, just 6 Bleed stacks do almost the same damage as the Poison, a bit more per tick actually, with 100 more Condition Damage. In both our builds, the goal is of course to have Fury at most times for our shatters, so that we too can go hit that lovely magical 50%. But you never need to worry about the iDuelist not having the magical number in my proposed goofing around build, as it has Fury by default. Of course, we won’t always have Fury proc’d on us, and at that point anything below 50% is moot and you’re at 41%, with 30-41% being something I consider to be not noticeable. And with 61% being 11% more than I’ve ever noticed being useful when you do have Fury. Going by my own experience that is. If your experience is different, by all means, pipe in and share.

If I was to give a few extra cents on the build you linked, I personally find your setup to be too focused into the one Manipulation skill you carry, the Blink skill. Yes, Blink is a great skill, but I prefer it for chasing and/or escaping something. And I can’t use it that often regardless if it’s traited down from 30s to 24s or not. Those are both relatively long cooldown times. The added range, yes, that’s alright, but 900 is already decent, especially when you can add Phase Retreat to it (in any direction you want, considering Blinking “forwards” is a thing after all). But that’s my opinion. I never really care much for lowering cooldowns by 20%, as in most cases it’s a measly difference, or simply not a big enough difference to care. That doesn’t mean I never do it, I just rarely do it.

You could probably do some sort of Phantasm build if you want, but you’d better take the position of a harasser in your group, basically single-target focusing out key players at range. Gear is up to you, but you could do these traits to have a bit of team-play in the build, but also having the ability to be annoying when caught on your own as well.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fhAQNAraWl0npRtFrxKNcrRiqhYqXnuZylkKQJ78B

Personally, I’d do a hybrid setup. Dire armor, Berserker+Valkyrie trinkets, Rabid weapons, that should give you somewhere around 30% Crit and your Phantasms 50%. Make sure you use the iDuelist in the Chaos Storm to apply both Bleeds and Confusion at the same time, besides the 3k or so damage it can potentially fire in a hybrid build. Also have your team blast it as often as they can, Chaos Armor is an amazing and underused buff. Interrupt heals with the Pistol. Use your mantras to help your team with Stability and to Stunbreak, as well as to heal and remove conditions. Veil is for the group, but also for solo play, to be annoying and hide in Stealth pretty often while your Phantasms deal damage, alternatively to retreat if you notice your Phantasms dying faster than you can create new ones. You could use Time Warp, but it’s usually a bad idea, since it throws off cooldown rotations. Scepter is for the block if you should need to avoid some damage, while creating a clone.

It’s not entirely impossible to do some sort of Phantasm build in WvW, but there are perhaps other somewhat better options. Especially after the patch on the 9th. Mantras are starting to look very interesting with their AoE additions. But that won’t likely translate well to being caught on your own though.

Easiest way to counter the condition meta as a Mesmer is probably something like this:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fhAQBSSf2i0EZ1QO1ySTAA
Now fill in the rest of the build to your taste. If you want to remove more than 12 conditions, by all means, throw in more condition removal.

Why not try a 2/4/0/2/6 shatter-condi build after the patch, Joe? Switch it up a little. Pop on Tormenting runes in a condi set and go ham. Swap out the Sword for Scepter too I guess. Luckily it’s a condition that’s not frequently used, so you can get your own 18-20 stacks of Torment on people. Also, have you tried lowering your crit chance to 50% instead of 66%. Do you notice any difference at all? I have never been able to notice a difference unless I hit 100% once I get it to 50%. 50-99% all feels the same to me.

Do something goofy, play around a bit with the changes, something like http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fhAQNAW7alknpRtdqxMNcrRSpBdqrg6ykmmSqAUyTUOA-TFyHABzeRAISJFu7Poo6PFpcBgnAgZ6GeSJYAAEgZOzkZZGM0hO0hO0h21l5Mn5MnZpAgZNA-w perhaps?

What about actually ditching the entire idea of WvW(vW) and rather introduce some factions you can sign up with, like the Luxon and Kurzick’s of Guild Wars (please add Cantha while you’re at it). Just add a few more, or at least a third. Allow for maps to have overflows, and rather pool all efforts together for the factions in the various overflows. With the megaserver system being implemented elsewhere in the game, WvW(vW) is starting to feel like the odd kid out. You’re no longer really tied to a server in the other game modes anyways. I wouldn’t mind fighting for a faction of my choosing, with fellow players in said faction, instead of for a server.

How about they actually go ahead and implement the Legendary trinkets first. They said we would see at least one Legendary trinket before the end of 2013 in interviews. But that time came and passed, with nothing happening. After that, they should work on adding awesome-looking Legendary armors as well. While they’re at it, perhaps do that scavenger hunt for precursors they were talking about? That’s been said to be coming for a year and a half..

PS: I don’t think Ascended should be able to swap stats. Reserve that for Legendary items. We need stuff to strive towards in the game. It allows us to set ourselves some goals.