Guild Wars 2

GOSU.9574:

OmaiGodman.2098:

I think you missed the part where Guildwars 2 is the sequel to Guildwars 1.

I think you missed the part where there is no Guild Wars in this Guild Wars sequel.

I think you missed the part where the Guild Wars was something that happened during the century of which the first campaign, Guild Wars: Prophecies, plays out. You start playing 10 years after the Guild Wars has ended. So.. since it’s lore-based, that is still a part of the history, and as such, is present in Guild Wars 2.

Ross Biddle.2367:

Id drop all that wasted soldiers for zerk. Positioning is the only thing that’s going to keep you alive if something goes wrong.

Basically this. In a zerg environment, you can be as bunker as you want. If you get caught in the melee train, you’re dead meat as a Mesmer and mostly any other profession than Guardian and Warrior, no matter how much you try to tank it up. We can escape out of it once in a while, sure, with Distortion and Blinks, but that’s about it. Positioning is key for prolonged zerg encounters.

Can we stop saying Swiftness on PU helps Mesmer mobility? I’m seeing multiple Mesmers write that. What? Are we going to run around popping all of our lengthy to cooldown skills that grants Stealth, just to gain Swiftness as we run around.. only to be caught off guard with several skills on our bar not being ready to be used? Swiftness, in the PU rotation is pointless. It won’t get you far enough to make it more viable as a escape mechanic, and is hardly a boon (no pun intended) to in-combat gameplay. The absolutely idiotic mechanic of getting slowed from being in combat takes care of that.

Please stop saying it helps our mobility, or they’ll probably pat themselves on the back as if they’ve magically resolved the issue of Mesmer’s lacking severely in actually just that, mobility, being nearly forced to take Rune sets such as Traveler’s to keep up even remotely with others. Outside of the niche structured mode anyways.

But on topic; PU will be PU, the builds remains the same, it’s not going to be the end of the world that they’ve added Swiftness and Might to the rotation. I was expecting a harsher kind of nerf than to add Boons to the rotation.

This is in fact one of the absolute best engines in the industry right now. I don’t know what it is that they do, but I get a feeling they take a quick double-check on the VRAM and don’t use corrupted sectors. My GPU, is currently dying.. so to speak. Basically any game (well, a large amount of games anyways), other than Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2, will have polygons stretch out across the whole screen. This is not due to overheating, as the temperature is at a mediocre 50°C during load, my RAM tests shows no flaws there, CPU stress tests again is perfectly fine, so I can only conclude that I have over time, damaged some of the VRAM on the card. GW and GW2 however, seem to be able to ignore these damaged sectors, probably because it checks if it was written correctly before moving on. Whoever programmed it, is brilliant, and didn’t take shortcuts like most game developers do these days. Much respect to them for that.

Thank you in advance for making it so that mostly all (not incl. CE Rytlock and Hall of Monuments/Guild Wars Miniatures) are now freely tradable and without the idiotic Account Bound nonsense. That has to be what you announce tomorrow/today, right? Finally it will be a bit more like Guild Wars.

hihey.1075:

Absconditus.6804:

Zord.6130:

You know that by connecting 3 dots you will always get a triangle, right?

Totally! :P

That’s still a triangle, dude

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Degeneracy_(mathematics)#Triangle

I know. It’s a joke, duh
Now it’s a discontent fox.

Zord.6130:

You know that by connecting 3 dots you will always get a triangle, right?

Totally! :P

It’s getting colder lately, so I’ve dressed up Vella Absconditus for the weather.. sort of. Less is more, right? RPG logic and all that.

On my own, Staff and Scepter/Focus, no really. Condition shatters are actually somewhat fun in PvE, if you’re on your own and not a liability to someone who wants to kill stuff as fast as possible. Fun recipe: Lots o’ AoE Torment, kite away, watch them all die trying to get to you. Do your evil laugh. Repeat.

Hahaha, the commentary made my day, Joe. Great video, will watch again.
— “Stop, stop, stop! I’m not into that..”

witcher.3197:

I must say I’m having a great time reading these totally clueless comments that ignore my reasoning and keep calling it an exploit. All of these spots are accessible by walking, not even jumping is required. And it’s called teleport for a reason. There is no such thing as “works every 6th time” – you just missed the spot 5 times.

It’s just so clear you never tried this and don’t know what you are talking about.

You do realize you are the one that are defending an exploit, telling people they are clueless, right? In the particular case of images 4-7 for Khylo, you are showcasing the need to stand in a very specific spot in order to teleport, not up on the ledge, but through the wall, into the building. It doesn’t matter one bit if you can run in there, it doesn’t matter in any way or shape that it is basically calculating the distance going up through the stairs on the inside, it doesn’t matter that you can reproduce it with a 100% success rate, you are still exploiting a flaw in the skill and map in question. That is the definition of a exploit right there. Taking advantage of a unintended way something works. Any fool with half a brain can see that you are describing a exploit, a glitch, a bug. Phase Retreat is not supposed to send you through solid objects. That wall, is a solid object.

Here’s something for you to try, go next to some boxes in the game, a quick and easy location would be right by the (currently disabled) Fort Marriner Waypoint in Lion’s Arch. Now stand with your back to the boxes and barrels right by the bank, Phase Retreat. Notice how you just retreated to the boxes, not through them to the other side? Yeah, that’s because it’s not supposed to send you through objects. The other side of those boxes are easily reachable through walking, there’s no elevation difference even. The game sure should be able to calculate it, right?

The reason people ignore your reasoning, is because it’s flawed. That’s like saying it is perfectly alright to dupe items when such a glitch is found. — “Hey, I can reproduce it 100%, the game allows me to do it so it must be intended, right?” Wrong. I didn’t look through all your guide’s locations, but for the other spots in Khylo, it’s a perfectly good guide. I just noticed the teleports going through the wall in your Khylo guide, and recognize them as exploits, so I didn’t quite get why you would put them in a guide, since you clearly must have reported them.

If a dev comes in here and states it’s working as intended, then I’ll be the fool and halfwit. Until then, I’ll see it as an exploit.

It will be interesting to see how the new iLeap works. In the gameplay footage they showed during RU, it looked like the clone had Distortion on it as it was spawned. If that is purely cosmetic or if it actually has it remains to be seen. But if it does, it makes for teleporting into groups and out again a proper thing that we can do now, just like a Guardian with their Interventions. Could make for some interesting gameplay.

For now, I’ll stick with Staff + Scepter/Focus though. Want to toy around a bit more with the hybrid shatter build using Maim and generally being built around the condition application (and boon stripping) of shatters.

You should try give us a bit more information. Did you get conditions on you a lot? Such as Torment, Confusion, Vulnerability, Bleeds. If you did, it was a hybrid most likely. Did the Mesmer have Protection, Aegis, Regen up a lot? If so they used PU. There’s a few options to be had in Shatter builds.

Also, GS + Sw/P is pretty common for Shatter builds.

It’s ignorant to say that gear doesn’t matter. Fully Ascended, you are looking at better stats over someone in Exotics. You definitely notice a difference when going from Rare to Exotic, and again from Exotic to Ascended. It’s a much larger difference from Rare to Exotics granted, but there’s still a difference for the next tier.

But sure, you should be able to survive well enough in a set of Exotic armor. This may come down to your selected weapons, utility skills and traits. E.g., you should probably just whip out the Staff for the most part if you run with a group. That secures you tons of tagging within your opponents and gives you some good defensive skills. Soldier armor is still a good choice for a Guardian. And although traits have changed, you can get away with the good old standards in most cases. Guardians has been very stable in the game, rarely nerfed, but neither buffed too much.

Keep your Protection up, use your Aegis, don’t run into a opposing raid if you don’t got Stability (for that matter, you don’t have to go straight through them anyways, swerve around them if you feel squishy), take advantage of your heals, don’t stand in fields, clear your (and as a bonus, allies) debuffs. Eat your consumables. Don’t be afraid of taking Wall of Reflection, it’s still effective at killing off players in the other team at choke points. And.. spam Staff auto-attack.

How are you reproducing this with Blink then? Or a Shadowstep. You are teleporting through a wall, into a structure. Just because you can do it, doesn’t mean it’s not an exploit. Just because it has existed since Beta, doesn’t mean it’s right. Personally, I weren’t aware of it, nor have I seen many players take advantage of it when I have played structured on those maps, so I don’t think it’s necessarily widely known (Note, for clarification: I am talking about actually teleporting through the wall, not general teleportation up on ledges). Teleporting up on ledges and such, which you can also do with the ground-targeted Blink/Shadowstep mechanics, those I’m all for and think adds flavor to the professions that can do them, but when we teleport actually through stuff in the way presented in that guide, that should simply be reported and fixed.

And I agree, the skill is well designed, fun and adds depth to the profession. It’s just not working correctly if it sends you through a wall like that. That’s a very cheap way to get there. I remember when it used to constantly plop me below the terrain, they fixed that.

Your examples 4-7 of Khylo should be reported as bugs (I assume you already have, but why even put it in a guide then?). That’s no longer teleporting up on a ledge that is otherwise also accessible through running, that’s straight up glitching through terrain, a wall. Technically it’s reachable through running, true enough, but I find using stuff like that as being pure exploiting.

Sagat.3285:

What made you assume I play d/d I don’t ,not sure what game mode you are talking about the longer I disengage the higher the higher the chance of getting out of combat fully healing foe,while SR is on CD or maybe while I am busy on a combo field my foe will run away.

It doesn’t matter what weapons you play with. The whole point was, thieves have so many backup abilities to escape with that it’s not even funny. Missing a skill now and again is not going to destroy you as a Thief. Nor will getting one skill placed on a CD. That’s what it should do, even though there’s no actual CD’s on Thief skills normally, the skill should still get a cooldown period if it is hit with a Power Block interrupt. What’s so wrong with that? Every other profession suffers from not being able to use one interrupted skill, why should thieves be exempt from this?

And of course, disengaging is technically forfeiting, that’s pretty much the whole idea. And a Thief is.. a hit and run profession. If it fails, you reset. You avoid death, and can shortly afterwards try again. Sure, the enemy may have regenerated, but so have you.

I don’t see why it’s so unreasonable for someone to want to be able to place cooldowns on a skill of yours, if they manage to miraculously interrupt it, after having spent 6 points into a Trait line for said functionality.

I almost give up.. Yes, sure we’re all idiots and we’ll only use auto-attack. We clearly won’t swap to Staff either, because it’s all about the Scepter. Of course. As a matter of fact, we’ll only use Scepter, not even an offhand, why would we. There is no bigger picture and how it plays into other skills and conditions we can apply. And sure, other professions are poorly balanced when it comes to conditions, so why shouldn’t we be as well. Some would argue we already are, thanks to PU. Also, everyone moves one step forwards and two steps back, and never dodges, so of course we’ll never miss an attack, I know.

But really now, does this not add up on the already decent condition builds we have? Are you saying it won’t? Yes, it’s mainly single-target. Illusionary Elasticity is also better/easier to work with against a single target where you can control the bounce. The IE fix is more than enough, is it not? There’s no reason to throw more Torment into the picture and not actually fix anything about what is making the Scepter less desired currently, its slowness and being relatively easy to dodge when there’s some distance between you and the bolts.

As for how you could potentially apply some Torment pressure relatively fast, to perhaps force out a panic-cleanse, without wasting everything you got? Auto, dodge, block. Two clones generated, ~7-8 stacks of Torment. With 2000 Condition Damage (and that’s honestly easy to hit in WvW and I’m lowballing it here), that’s 1470 damage per second for two seconds (with 7 stacks), dropping off to 1260 for 3 more seconds (let’s say the clones are blown up, not adding more), before dropping to 1050 for the remaining 3 seconds. Total: 9870 damage if not cleansed). It’ll drop off fast, but it’s still painful for a few seconds and it doesn’t take more stacks than that to create panic in someone, or well, to force them to use their cleanse. It’s not like you have to do that as your opening either. Start with Staff, give yourself some defense with Chaos Armor. Bleeds and Burns, Might if you want. You should be more than capable of pushing your opponent into cleansing with the Staff too, most likely more easily. If you’re lucky, maybe you can get Confusing Images off as well on the swap, or you could save it for after the block, in case your opponent counters with a dodge to avoid the Torment, and there’s at least a bit better chance for CI to not just be dodged completely.

Now I’m not saying this will happen all the time, it’s not always going to be perfect conditions, no pun intended, for this to occur. Sometimes you’ll even generate more stacks though, since you continue to auto a few more hits in, the clones maintaining their stack, and so on forth. It’s something that can’t be written in a topic post, it’s dynamic, and happens as we play. People will also stop at times, for multiple reasons, this will halt the damage. But why would they just stand there and allow you to pummel them with more conditions, this is where the forced movement comes in. The combat is based on being agile, and moving. The condition punishes this pretty hard.

Now, in the example above, there’s very little difference from what we can already do. The major contributor to that scenario is the block-Torment, that can be avoided, though it’ll cost them a dodge, which is still a win for me when I wish to apply other conditions and “burst”. The only real difference from as-is today, is 1 stack from the first auto attack, and 2 stacks from clones generated from a dodge and the block. That’s not massive, I know, but it adds up. It’s still 630 damage per second, or around 2520 damage over the course of 5 seconds. If I was able to force out a cleanse while I was avoiding damage with a block and created two easy clones helping out, I’ll take it. I can then apply other conditions. If they got more cleanses, great, it’s still easier to apply conditions than it is to cleanse them.

Why would you burst your whole nut of conditions in the first push. You’d use the auto attacks to force out cleansing, then you would apply as much conditions as you can. With a potential 1200 damage per second from simply auto attacking out Torment, you are likely to be forcing some players to cleanse. If you see your HP drop drastically as you try to move around to avoid damage, you’re likely to cause the opponent to spend some cleanses. What good does that do them, the stacks are instantly building up again, now they have no cleanses for a while, and you can burst out your conditions by actually spending some cooldowns. This is also not taking into account the damage from the Power-attribute of the attacks, nor Bleeds from clones, clones exploding, such things.

We had plenty of Torment from the block as it is. That is easy to dodge however, and fixing the Scepter is not adding Torment to the auto attacks and clones. It’s still relatively slow at attacking, pretty easy to strafe if you create some distance, the proc of the block is still very easy to dodge (though so many players fail at doing so), the channeled skill can be completely avoided with a dodge. It’s not making it magically better, but it’s “fixing” it in the absolute worst way possible. Or rather, not really fixing it at all. It’s tacking on a powerful condition to it. The weapon is able to produce 11 stacks of Torment on its own. 8 of which are from you. Add one more if you use the Sigil. That already starts to hurt.

I guarantee we’ll see cries from other professions about Mesmer and Torment (and we’ll see cries about our new Staff trait fix). And we’ll be nerfed. Again.

Sagat.3285:

Really? Bad design is call over the place and I’m open-minded but nope you are not convincing me. Missing a skill on thief is very punishing,the first bad design would be to fix thief weapons THEN your GM trait over thief. Thief is becoming more reflexe and timing based than any other classes even more post patch.

You should rephrase a bit; Missing your <skill here> with <profession here> is very punishing. It’s not just thieves. Also, if you miss your CnD, you can swap to Shortbow and shadowstep your way out with Infiltrator’s Arrow. You can use Hide in Shadows to gain Stealth and get out. You can use Blinding Powder, Shadow Refuge, Shadowstep/Shadow Return, Roll for Initiative+Withdraw. There are so many options for retreat on missing a skill like Cloak and Dagger. If you are punished that badly, perhaps you’re just bad (until you get some practice) at playing the Thief profession, sorry but it’s the harsh reality..

It’s also nearly impossible to miss a opener CnD (unless you’re fighting a decent player who has/is playing Thief, but not necessarily when you battle them). Tap CnD and instantly Steal(/Mug) when in range. You’ll shadowstep (and deal damage with Mug if traited, or at least removed the Aegis), and instantly go into stealth as the buffered CnD hits your target, allowing for a instant Backstab as you push through the enemy (don’t have collision on in the Options). Almost nobody is able to react to that, even if they know it’s coming, and you’ve in the matter of the blink of an eye done about 15k damage to pretty much anyone if you’re built glass. Should they by some miracle not be on the floor, you can spam Heartseeker for massive damage on their lowered health.. because you know, it’s a spammable skill that you can repeatedly “exploit” with initiative. The kind of skill you say is weaker because it’s possible to spam. Nope, not really true.

Let’s widen our horizon beyond the (subjectively) boring “competitive tournament” we got in this game. Why would anyone take us there instead of a better suited profession, such as a Thief anyways? Let’s look at a bit at World vs. World however. Let’s say we’ll go 4 in Domination for boon stripping, so that’s 20% duration increase. We’ll use Runes of Tormenting, another 45% increase. Toss in a Koi Cake with it’s 40% increase, and as an inexpensive option. Now we’re looking at a 100% duration increase. That’s 5 seconds on the first attack, 8 seconds on the second attack, based on the tooltips from Guild Wars 2’s RU stream.

With an attack rotation taking roughly 4 seconds, we’re looking at the first attack replacing itself as soon as we start a new rotation, and there being about 3 seconds left on the second attack as we get to that. In an ideal world, your auto-attacks alone are maintaining 3 stacks of Torment on your target while wielding the scepter.

If you want to throw in Time Warp, for a short while (10 seconds), you should in an ideal world maintain roughly 4 stacks of Torment, from your auto attacks. TW has a hefty 3 minutes and 30 seconds cooldown period though, so that’s not really something to rely all too much on.

But that’s looking at auto-attacks only. What about using the block? That’s another 5 stacks. The clones all apply roughly one stack each as long as they’re alive (and hit). Your heal applies another 2 stacks. Maybe you take a Sigil of Torment as well, for a chance at that one extra stack. Perhaps you even go for Maim of the Disillusioned, and add 3 more stacks. That’s when it starts to get potentially painful. In World vs. World that is.

Players will likely end up using condition cleanses on an auto attack. We’re talking about you running there with up to 6 stacks from just auto attacks alone, something that didn’t cost the Mesmer anything in terms of cooldowns. That’s somewhere around 1260 damage per second (with say a respectable 1950 Condition Damage (which is not exactly maxing out in WvW) from Rabid/Dire gear, Traits, Runes, Sigils, Consumables, etc. (but not even counting potential Might, nor WvW buffs)), on a moving target.

Now, we don’t live in an ideal world, so yes, there will be times where you won’t hit all your attacks, you will be using other skills, you will potentially be in stealth, etc.—a lot of things factor into this. But I still think Torment on a auto attack, is a bad idea. The damage output you’ll be looking at together with the Bleeding, Burn and Confusion is getting a bit ridiculous (that’s not to say we don’t already have these conditions and potential, it’s just getting worse/stronger). It’s also boring. If I wanted to be great at conditions, I’d likely play a Necromancer. I wanted to play Mesmer because it used to be a profession about control.

Although I guess, Torment and Confusion are “control” conditions as well.

Aluren.1896:

Scepter projectiles are NOT homing compared to Staff clones which means you will be able to move out of their damage. Torment is also 75% the condition damage of a bleed if the target isn’t moving and you are able to stack way more bleeds than you will torment.

Yeah, and it’s so hard to hit players with your Scepter clones as-is, right? Have you even touched Scepter? You spam them up close to your target, not at range. You’re inherently more bunker as a Condition Mesmer, so good luck avoiding clones that’s right next to you. There’s basically no travel time for the projectile. If the clones are cleaved, great, they spread out some conditions. Win-win. And sure, Torment deals less damage if you’re standing still. How often do people stand still in PvP? Really now.. that’s such a pointless thing to mention. Even bunkers move, they move on the point. You don’t just stand still in PvP.. Also, Scepter’s one of the two weapon sets I have been using for the last few months because of the block (which is actually easy to avoid the Torment from, although people fail at avoiding it in most cases—that would have been a better thing to buff/fix than to put Torment on the auto-attack and clones).

Aluren.1896:

Currently staff clones do not inherit condition duration. Unless it is a fix that appears with the scepter clones getting condition duration, there will be no way for you to increase the duration of torment.

Oh yeah, totally.. forgot that you can’t do Torment at all. Right.

I swear, people playing our class forgets how easy it is to create clones. You won’t have 3 Scepter clones up at all times, but you will constantly have some of them up, creating a stream of short-duration Torment on your target. You will switch weapons roughly every 10 seconds, at least if you’re effective, though things like stealth may affect that enough for you to stay on a single weapon for longer. Not everyone against the change is basing it on some guy named Helseth saying something about it though.

Having Torment applied on 2 out of 3 attacks is stupid. It won’t last forever, no, it’s short in duration, yes, but it’s enough to be overpowered. You can dodge up clones instantly, don’t forget that.. it’s not like you must wait for that third hit of the Scepter. There are also ways of increasing the duration. Plus this is something that just makes PU even better, and we don’t need that. PU builds were already strong enough.

It may not scream Mesmer, but I love the new Ceremonial Plated Outfit.. so I’m wearing it.

I don’t see it being that useful. You’re copying Boons. You’re not removing them on the enemy (though we have good Boon removal already, so they could be copied and then we could remove Boons I guess). It also takes the at least slightly similar copying-skill-mechanic we had in Guild Wars and tosses that out the window, so now we have nothing like that at all. At least Mimic as it was, was interesting as a mechanic. Not good, but interesting. If it could block and steal any one skill, then I think people might have been using it. Imagine how fun it would be to use skillfully, anticipating and blocking a specific skill, then using it back on the enemy. E.g., you block a Backstab, but since that can only be used in Stealth, you need to put yourself in Stealth before you can use it back on your target(s), etc.—No such thing here though.. we copy Boons.. “yay”.

Zefrost.3425:

If this thing is being summoned right in my face the animation speed of the clone needs to be nerfed by 50% so that people can actually dodge it.

Mesmer was strong enough in 1v1 already.

This is not going to be more powerful than a Thief using Infiltrator’s Strike, you can’t abuse that more than you can abuse your Blink, e.g., you can only teleport up on things the game detects you would be able to run up to. If you look at the Ready Up VoD, it’s a pretty distinct looking summoning animation, rather flashy, as it seems the clone is summoned on the target with a seconds distortion on it. There’s also the sound.

PU Mesmer is rather “strong” 1v1, I’ll give you that, but they don’t need Illusionary Leap. What you should be worried about when it comes to Mesmer, is the seemingly horrible decision to give us Torment on our Scepter auto-attacks. That’s something they should just not do, it will make it so stupidly powerful. They just need to speed up the animation of the auto-attack, make the Illusionary Counter instant if proc’d (instead of this stupid long windup time that anyone can all too easily dodge away from) and perhaps tweak it so the Torment is on the active (Counterspell) and the Blind on the block proc. Confusing Images is also slow, and easy to dodge. You dodge the whole thing when you dodge basically. It just needs polish, it doesn’t need to be made overpowered with two out of three attacks applying Torment, and clones created doing this as well.

Anyways, it’s about time the clone stopped being such a hindrance to our Sword. The changes to Illusionary Leap is one of the best I’ve heard about for a long time. Also a bonus-yay for fixing the Focus Phantasm.. if it’s actually fixed this time that is. Some good changes seems to be coming, except that Torment on Scepter auto-attack, that needs to go. I don’t want us to be stupidly overpowered and a profession requiring no skill to play what so ever.

Becka Williams.4978:

You were. You got exactly what you wanted. You knew that commander tags might become account bound, yet bought them anyways. The money wasn’t “wasted”. You spent it and got what you wanted. We have to make choices, and that means guessing at what’s going to happen in the future. Do you complain that you bought an ipad 2 a year before the ipad 3 came out, and then go to apple saying “it’s not fair, I want a refund” or do you realize you got use out of the ipad before the new one came out, and you got exactly what you paid for?

Excuse me? How would I or anyone else know Commander tags might become Account Bound? Practically nothing, even as short a time as just a year ago, was Account Bound. I doubt ArenaNet themselves knew Commander tags would become Account Bound at that point.

In what non-crackerhead way can you even compare it with a revision of an iPad? Please explain how you in real life, have access to multiple “characters” that you can move your consciousness from and to? How Apple can make the iPad change colors, but not only that, without a single cost to them within the universe of which the iPad exists, make it so that it magically duplicates itself across these “characters” that’s all you. You’re comparing something virtual, to something real, in a way which it does not relate one bit. ArenaNet are Gods within their universe. They can do whatever, whenever. If they want, they can make it rain goats. They can make one item into multiple items. Pigs can fly. And within this universe, this costs them nothing. In the real world, sure, it costs them development time and money, but Gold doesn’t pay for that.

So why should you, armed with this new knowledge and certainty, get to have this for 100 Gold, just because you now know that it is coming and are spending your money now in order to save yourself from needing to spend an extra 200 Gold later? Why am I supposed to get treated differently, within a game, a virtual world? The only reason anyone has bought multiple Commander tags, is because it wasn’t account-wide, because it was something considered a very useful thing, and as you play, you tend to swap your main character. Even you will do that at some point.

Comparing something in a virtual world, where the cost of refunding Gold will cost them practically nothing, to something in real life.. please.

Heironeous.4928:

How about this question – I’m super glad that this plan was revised – however, I have worked very hard to get the THREE tags I currently hold…. Can I get my gold back?

I now have 200 gold invested in something that I neither care (about multiple colors) or need if they’re going account bound.

Sitting here with the same question on my tongue. Maybe it’s been touched upon elsewhere, but I’ll add my voice here none the less.. it’s 3:39am. I too have purchased Commander tag for 3 of my characters. With the changes now making them account-wide, that is indeed 200 Gold that I did not need to spend. I would quite honestly like to get this Gold back.

Even if the new implementation of the Commander tag is/was to cost 300 Gold, and I technically having spent 300 Gold on three tags are at a match for the new costs, that isn’t a fair solution to this. Not at all. There are people right now, armed with this new knowledge, buying a single Commander tag, for 100 Gold, that will become account-wide once these changes goes live. That’s a bit unfair, is it not? Just because I was an early adopter, I get shafted out of 200 Gold that others that knows about these changes right now aren’t?

I do hope you have some sort of compensation in mind for this. I love the change of it becoming account-wide. I love the implementations of colors. I don’t like if I am to be out 200 Gold when Jimmy Commandsalot that just bought a Commander tag today, gets to have these great changes for a third of the cost, 100 Gold. I want to be treated fairly.

I don’t quite understand why any group would really want to attack ArenaNet though. It’s not like they are an “evil” corporation. They provide two games, Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2, which does not have a subscription fee, does not force-bait you into the cash shop and which are overall pretty decent games. Their support team has also been absolutely stellar every time I’ve had to contact them too, with all of my cases being generally resolved within 3-5 hours from when I submitted the inquiry. The handling times are amazing.

So.. why exactly would anyone want to harass them? I’ve been frustrated by design choices here and there, by some.. what I consider stupid directions taken now and again, but I don’t see how they’ve done anything that should be reason for a large-scale DDoS attack (—not that there ever is).

If some group(s) are going around just doing DDoS attacks for the fun of it, that’s just.. well, sad. You might want to find some other purpose in your life. You, the individual in such a group is never going to be famous for it. Nobody outside your overall little circle of contacts are going to know what you’ve done, unless you get caught, which you wouldn’t want to be. It’s basically never going to get you laid. And let’s face it, that’s the purpose of life right there. Getting laid. Yeah, don’t quite get the appeal.

If it floats their boat, whatever.. I can always wait until they tire of it. It doesn’t make me angry, I just feel sad on their behalf. It’s not like they can keep it going for years on end anyways, that’d result in them getting caught. With all the lawsuit fees involved in loss of revenue, obstruction of services, etc., etc., that comes with it.

It was pretty nasty, in World vs. World. In other words, in one game mode. Basically you would take a small team/army of Mesmer’s with you, and they’d all throw down their Glamour fields, causing the enemy team to steamroll themselves to death. Yes, it was somewhat overpowered, and most likely still would be pretty damaging today, even with all the cleansing that’s going on.

I think the implementation of it in the first place was a terribly stupid one. Instead of working like an altered Ineptitude/Cry of Frustration/Wandering Eye/Clumsiness/etc. skill from Guild Wars, in how it would remain on target for a short duration, and deal damage once if the target uses a skill, they went with a passive DoT.. dot dot dot.. This made it practically useless in PvE, where enemies simply attack too slowly. And they should have been perfectly aware of that. They programmed it.

Was the nerf justified, sure. Was it a bit too drastic, yes. Are ArenaNet constantly making this game more and more casual, removing anything that punishes poor play and rewards skill, yes. Is this game being dumbed down further and further, mhm. Watch, they’ll start nerfing interrupts soon. Can’t have people getting interrupted from their skill spamming.

Got it, but not so much for Mesmer. She’s got Sunrise, so I don’t see myself swapping that out. I do like the skin though, so I unlocked it and at least I’ll have the option in the future. The new costume looks awesomely detailed as well (seems to push out 2H weapons from the back so that it doesn’t clip), so I grabbed that too. I was so sure that costume was going to be the reward for the PvP Tournament of Legends when I first saw it. Glad I was wrong (but hope they get something amazing looking).

I like the active gameplay in Guild Wars 2, but I constantly keep logging back to Guild Wars where the Mesmer profession is much more interesting. There’s just so many Mesmer abilities that’s gone out the window in the Guild Wars 2’s implementation. We do have interrupts, but there’s so much instant-cast, it would be nice with a interrupt Hex that last for 2-3 seconds here and there.. you know, to put on your enemy instead (clever players will just auto-attack it away and/or wait). There’s absolutely no type of skill cloning/stealing in Guild Wars 2. That was a fun mechanic we have in Guild Wars.. what ever happened to those? I want them to take the devs on a proper playthrough of the first game (as a Mesmer) and get inspired for alterations/additions to this new implementation of theirs. It’s fun, but it could be so much more.

This game also no longer puts any requirement on the opponents to learn when to-, and when not to attack. It’s been simplified so much. It’s all about bashing buttons and the skill ceiling is basically left down at your ankles these days.

If I could have a vote, I’d say start by re-working Confusion as a whole. No longer should it be able to trigger multiple times as-is, but rather once, and that one time for quite a bit of damage instead. The duration for which it stays on your opponent should be short as well, only 2-4 seconds. That way it would also be useful to us in PvE, as we would place it on the PvE target before an attack was going to be done, basically giving us something to time on our own and raising the skill ceiling by an inch.

How about something cool.. like GW’s Mimic? Spell. Learn the last skill used by target ally. For 20 seconds, Mimic is replaced by the skill you learned. You may use the skill once. Stealing Boons, yawn… Oops, I’m sorry.. COPYING Boons.. “ya-aa-a-y”. I wish they’d go back and look at what we had in Guild Wars once in a while. There’s so much awesomeness to Mesmer there that are just lost over the course of 250 odd years.

Just level all professions to Lv.80, if you worry about being top tier over having fun with a specific profession. That way you can switch from character to character with ease, every time the meta switches as game balancing is done. Go ahead and taste the Flavor of the Month, every month. Make sure you copy other peoples builds instead of trying out things on your own too. And remember, you only need to press each skill once, 1-5, then swap weapons, and repeat. Don’t worry about what it does, just click every skill. An expert player favorite is to roll your face over the keys too. That’s how the pro’s do it.

You know, the person that programmed the AI on the clones, likely programmed the AI on the Henchmen and Heroes in Guild Wars. It explains why it’s so terrible at times. On another note, I had no issue what so ever with completing any of the LW updates so far on Mesmer. Phantasms were purely there for me to spike something down. Yes, they got destroyed in AoE afterwards, but at least they were able to perform an attack first, which did the job. Only way I’d see them not being able to do something is if I would be stupid enough to just spam skills willy-nilly, not paying attention to rotations from my foes attacks and spiking between them. In that last fight, you can avoid almost every attack by the boss without any effort, such as dodging. I hardly see how it was a problem.

I also saw someone comment on Kasmeer putting a Portal where she wanted it as I skimmed down the topic, maybe you didn’t pay attention to the story, but it was touched upon that she is a part of the Mesmer Collective, which has been explained further both inside and outside the game. They could perhaps have put more information about it within the game however.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Mesmer_Collective

Certain extremely powerful mesmer spells are known only to the most elder members of the mesmer community, and are kept a secret from outsiders.

Is it unreasonable to think that a more powerful version of the Portal spell is practiced in this collective? Not really. Is it a bit annoying that we can’t reveal towers and place portals wherever we want? I guess. But I’m alright with not being almighty and the center of the universe. Queen Jennah is a wastly more powerful Mesmer than we are, same with Countess Anise. I also want Anise’s armor.. make it happen, ArenaNet. At least after we kill her upon discovering she was Scarlet Briar all along, deal?

Why exactly aren’t you using the stickied topic? https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Show-us-your-Mesmer/page/30 —In what way is that “full”?

I just figured someone at ArenaNet likes this maybe not so famous, famous photo edit.

Can I just have something like the Simple Thievery elite from Guild Wars instead?
(For those that don’t know what that did: Elite Spell. Interrupt target foe’s action. If that action was a skill, that skill is disabled for 20 seconds, and Simple Thievery is replaced by that skill.)

Yes, that would be too OP. We have that ability already, it’s called Stealth.

Back to the Cultural set I go as well..

Illusionary Leap doesn’t have a correct tooltip now either. It doesn’t even have a correct skill name! It should be Illusionary Charge But I’ll Potentially Stop To Admire Stuff, with a description explaining that the clone will charge towards your target, but randomly stop if it sees something interesting on the ground. Such things may include rocks, strands of grass, pebbles and ants.

Dracatis.1908:

Maybe it’s just me, but I just don’t see thematically a Mesmer using a pistol. I mean if your just going to shoot something in the face… why mesmerize them? Off-hand I see it as a last resort for sucking at Mesmer’ing.

What if I told you.. there was no weapons. That gun you see in my Mesmer’s hands. It’s not there. It’s me playing a trick on your mind. You think I have a gun, but it’s in fact just an illusion. That snake curling up near your feet.. that is real though. Us Mesmer’s can’t afford bullets anyways. Nobody takes us to dungeons anymore.

Since our Goddess is Lyssa, I’ll take the changes (that’s not written in the notes either) to the Lyssa backpiece, where it’ll now rotate between Lyssa’s two faces, as a positive patch to our profession. Best patch 2012-2014!

PS: I do believe it’s the first time we’ve seen anything towards the way she was presented in Guild Wars though, with her dark and bright dual-personality/embodiment appearance.

Unfortunately, it’s true enough that you simply can’t act like a clone to fool anyone. ArenaNet has made sure of that. Basically, all an opponent needs to do, is to tab-target quickly. You will have buffs on you that your clones will not, guaranteed. Plus, well, the clones are made of paper and die if you look harshly at them.

The only use for clones, is to confuse really new players, or to Shatter. If you’re not playing Shatter, shatters are worthless. If your shatters are worthless, your clones are too pretty much. They deal no damage, and they die when looked harshly at. As much as I like the combat I get out of Mesmers, I find myself returning more and more to Guild Wars recently. At least our Mesmer there had some options. At least we had cool skills, skills that worked and felt rewarding to use.

Going forwards is for hipsters anyways. We like going backwards, e.g., Portal, Phase Retreat, nerfs to our profession.

I can’t get myself to swap from Traveler’s, I feel so slow without them. If only we could get a Movement Speed signet to swap in and out from too..

Explain how a “tank” is of any relevance in Guild Wars 2 PvP. The same way talking about upper-, mid- and lower lanes is of any sort of relevance to engagements in WvW. In what way or form is any tanky character going to deny you from running straight through them, or circling around whatever minimal thing they have to deny you with (e.g., Line of Warding). Are they using a “Provoke” kind of ability on you, which forces you to keep attacking them? That skill completely flew past me in the past near two years I’ve played. In what possible way can you not walk normally into the enemy backline?

Fay isn’t saying you should go melee and burst them, although that would clearly be a part of an effective Shatter build, but the missing key word here is range, melee range, not necessarily that you should switch to Sword. With a Guardian covering you with all those boons, you can quite easily get away with getting into melee range and shattering, before using Blink, Decoy, Distortion to get out of there if need be. Obviously you can also use a Staff as a secondary, to blink out backwards, to give yourself Chaos Armor, and so on forth. Chaos Armor is a under used blast finisher-field boon as well, so your team could do well with blasting some of your Ethereal fields if you provide it to them.

Sure, you can be poked from “enemy marksmen”, but you can survive being poked, especially with a Guardian keeping you boon-fed like that. Even your Chaos Armor should be enough to withstand some pokes as you reset while doing your sustained damage at range. Being poked doesn’t hurt all that much. You got stealth utilities and invulnerability abilities to slip away with if need be.

Why are you even comparing Guild Wars 2 to a MOBA? There are no Top-Mid-Low lanes in a WvW-fight, you’re always going to be there as your whole team in those engagements. Nor are there any jungles to get stronger on monsters in.. you, as a whole group, are roamers, harassers, or.. junglers.. if you insist on using that word.

Nobody has neither denied the place for sustained damage in engagements, they’ve just said that as a Mesmer, we fill that role relatively poorly. We’re better at boon stripping and bursting with our team, than we are at sustained damage over time. Your Warrior buddy is doing better sustained damage over time, and is providing a better burst. Even your boon sharing, healing Guardian buddy is likely to be doing comparable sustained damage, with each auto-attack of a Staff in a relatively tanky build based around sharing boons and healing, doing roughly 1000 damage to 5 targets on each pulse. The two of them are keeping each other (and you) alive as well, while performing sustained damage.

Are we viable, sure to an extent, but are we optimal, nope.. we’re no longer anywhere close to being optimal. Whoever is balancing us, seems to either not understand how we function, or has a personal agenda against us, because they’ve hated fighting us perhaps or whatever other reason there could be.

I do however think it’s important to play something you think is fun. And if your team is fine with you being a little less optimal, that’s good, play how you find it to be fun or you’ll just burn out. But I would definitely not be asking the question if I’m viable in a video where I’m not optimal. A Shatter build, with a Greatsword, doing the same things you are doing already, would be a better showcase of that.

Got to admit it’s the first thing I notice too, you’re in a group with a Warrior and Guardian, in a video asking if you’re viable. Both professions that can deal more damage than a Mesmer, but in this case, it seems the Guardian is built more for boon support—keeping you and the Warrior alive. (The Warrior has far better burst than Mesmer.)

Probably something like the Wine- or Purple Ice dyes. You’re not transparent though, so you’re not really going to look very illusionary to most people. Just very pinkish-purple, hehe.