Guild Wars 2

Eleivo.2761:

It would require ArenaNet to make more changes to other classes, rather than changing the mesmer.

Well, they could change up the Mesmer slightly, and still keep these no-CD heals and such around. Imagine some Hex Utilities.

Even something as crude as the first few you get in Pre-Searing Ascalon of Guild Wars. Such as Backfire, which is a 10 second hex that makes the target take damage upon casting a spell.. oh right, Confusion. Except it’s worthless after they nerfed it so heavily because they want to baby their players who can’t do anything but auto-attack, and it’s not that it’s exactly unique to Mesmer, considering we apply it probably the worst out of all the professions now… Yay for everyone being able to do everything, right?

Honestly, I think CD’s in Guild Wars 2 are a bit over the top. If I recall right, the longest CD we had on anything in Guild Wars was for Arcane Thievery with its 60 seconds, which actually stole a target ally’s Elite.. you know, it was actually.. cool. Perhaps we simply suffer from having too many skills on too long cool down periods.

Not sure how we could even remotely get close to the beauty of a Guild Wars Mesmer. We have nothing that would really rival the Echo-, Ineptitude-, or Shared Burden elites. (Signet of) Clumsiness, Wandering Eye, Fragility, Frustration; we can do somewhat similar things (except the knockdowns) through “inconsistent” paper-clone Shatter mechanics and traits, but it is not as beautiful as how it is when a well played Mesmer in Guild Wars shuts someone down.

Even stuff like Drain Delusion or Drain Enchantment, could have made it over to Guild Wars 2; remove a disability/buff on the target, steal e.g., 25% Stamina and grant Mesmer 100% Stamina on success (w/ a little heal for Enchantment). But we don’t really see such kind of skills. Everything’s a bit more simplified it seems.

Skills and combat in Guild Wars 2 has been perhaps overly simplified, with the balance team seemingly making it more and more about having one viable build for every profession as we go forward. I like the combat in Guild Wars 2 I should add. I just wish we had a few more of the brilliant hexes and elites we had in the first game. I do understand how frustrating it is to get shut down of course.. I guess that’s why we have a milder form of it here in Guild Wars 2. But I find that a bit boring. It’s almost like they only want us to have a Berserker-race, who can mash buttons faster.

Wrong game? At least my GW Mesmer is named the same as my GW2 Mesmer, that counts for something, right?—Wish this set was in Guild Wars 2 as well. I guess in ways we can somewhat mimic it (e.g., there’s a vague resemblance to the Inquest Armor (Light), wiki body piece), but it wouldn’t be the same. We need more classy looking armors, or at least pants for female characters. It’s annoying that there’s only skirts for Light armors.

PopeUrban.2578:

Absconditus.6804:

PopeUrban.2578:

Sweetblue Huntress.9856:

On a related note, when I received my reward after Belinda died and I’m feeling sad watching Kas and Jory cry, there goes my character:

<cue maniacal laughter> Mine, alll mine!

I actually cringed.

Same here, the whole sad scene played out… my character remaining appropriately and stoically silent… Kasmeer looks at me as i clikc on her to try and say something, and then I come up with:

“YOU CAN NEVER HAVE TOO MUCH TREASURE!”

I laughed, then felt a little guilty.

All I could come up with was.. “Soooo… about that sword. Could I have it? What..? Too soon?”—On a related note, I really liked the cutscene itself though, there was a good amount of custom animations in it which was really nice to see, so good job to whoever did that cutscene. Keep the cutscenes coming, yay for cutscenes!

You misunderstand sir. My character literally said those exact words without my prompting him to do so (because he looted a rare from the reward) It’s one of the male human “rare loot” voice lines.

You misunderstand, sir. I understood your character stated this. That is what I said though.

Toughness will reduce physical, and physical only, damage. Vitality will let you eat up more condition damage, and.. physical damage. The physical damage will be higher as a result of not having Toughness though. Regardless, since you are pretty squishy with Berserker equipment at any rate, I’d say Vitality is probably the better bet. Protect yourself a bit against conditions.

I use the Berserker+Valkyrie Ascended trinkets myself (Power, Vitality, Precision, Ferocity), to get a little bit more health. It does drop the Precision from the pure Berserker trinkets, but I aim for 50% Critical Chance, and hit that comfortably with food buffs regardless.

Chaos.3579:

The big issues with this skill is
1) blind stops this skill dead in its tracks……

Blind stops ALL offensive skills dead in their track, unless you whiff out an attack to remove it first. So yeah.. that there is more of a, don’t use it if you’re currently blinded.

Changes to the skill? A bit wider cone at least, if not 360°, since it is a bit annoying to need to let go of your keys to make sure your character turns and face your opponent directly. In such a active game, freezing yourself in place like that is just annoying. Maybe a slightly reduced cooldown period. Other than that, I think the skill is relatively functional and decent.

Hah.. funny. I give it a 3/10 on the trolling success scale. I like the part about the Dragon cycle, since it was put into the lore years before the game you’re comparing it too. Since, you know.. there was a Guild Wars, and this is Guild Wars 2. Also the whole idea of a cycle of things is not exactly unique.

The players experience a vision of the Eternal Alchemy, not specifically dragons. But sure, we “save” Taimi doing so, a very unique concept right there. Never seen that before, never have I seen anyone do such actions in movies, books, other games. Yup. Totally was from that one specific game!

Oh, and the Orders are working together, there’s multiple races? Oh, kinda like in Guild Wars? You know.. this is Guild Wars 2. I know that number two might be difficult to grasp, but this is actually the second of two games in the same fictional universe! It’s like.. mind blowing, I know. I’ll give you a moment to let it sink in.

Good effort though. I was entertained, would read again.

Genlog.4983:

daggers is a no very simple it have nothing to do with the magic of a mesmer

and btw nercro already use duel daggers

bells are stil better like Kodan how he use it it suits the magic style of mesmer much beter

also 1 of his underwater weapen use music atack also

Swords and Greatwords has nothing to do with the style of the Mesmer either then, right? What does it matter if Necromancer’s can dual wield daggers? An Elementalist can do that too. Thieves can as well. What’s you point?

Out of the current weapons in the game, Dagger seems way more natural on Mesmer, with an Assassin type Phantasm in off-hand, and probably some evasive/damage oriented skills if available to main hand. I don’t really see myself as a Mesmer running around bashing people with a Hammer, I’d rather see Engineer’s get that as a new weapon available to them. Nor do I think either of the bows or a Rifle are necessarily fitting. Mace, not really, it’s too “heavy”. A Shield.. eh, nah… Axes, maybe.. still do think Dagger is a “lighter” looking weapon that fits the profession better. Warhorn, again.. no.

Pistol in main hand could be a nice thing too of course, but that’s another ranged weapon. We don’t really lack in the ranged department.

I don’t think they should necessarily focus on bringing the professions new weapon types. Sure, fans sounds fun. Scythes too (Dervish anyone?). But there’s still currently existing weapons that each profession could get to use, before we get to the need of making new models, animations and so on forth for totally new weapon types. Existing stuff tends to share animations across professions, with the visual spell effects being what sets them apart. Personally, I don’t like the idea of bells at all, sorry, but it just sounds.. no. Bells. Really? You’re going to ring someone to deaf.. I mean, death?

I’d rather want to see a Dagger added to Mesmer with some sort of Assassin Phantasm. In a way, similar to the one we have in our downed state I guess. Our downed state needs to be re-worked anyways, it’s absolutely rubbish.

I think all professions should get access to more existing weapons, and they stated that is something they would like to do.. over at least half a year ago. Not sure what happened to that statement. Out of the current weapons we can’t use, personally, I find Dagger to suit Mesmer the most.

I don’t think they need to add new weapon types just yet. And even if they do add a weapon type or two, that is likely not going to put us in a better spot. We have fundamental flaws to our class design. Such as paper clones to deal damage, which also attacks rather slowly, etc.

PopeUrban.2578:

Sweetblue Huntress.9856:

On a related note, when I received my reward after Belinda died and I’m feeling sad watching Kas and Jory cry, there goes my character:

<cue maniacal laughter> Mine, alll mine!

I actually cringed.

Same here, the whole sad scene played out… my character remaining appropriately and stoically silent… Kasmeer looks at me as i clikc on her to try and say something, and then I come up with:

“YOU CAN NEVER HAVE TOO MUCH TREASURE!”

I laughed, then felt a little guilty.

All I could come up with was.. “Soooo… about that sword. Could I have it? What..? Too soon?”—On a related note, I really liked the cutscene itself though, there was a good amount of custom animations in it which was really nice to see, so good job to whoever did that cutscene. Keep the cutscenes coming, yay for cutscenes!

You could do some sort of Phantasm-Power build with those weapons. I like Sc/Sw for the two blocks myself, which is a relatively fast way to create clones without having Deceptive Evasion, and these have been the weapons that I run around in Dry Top with lately, for the same reason you seem to want to use them, you like the legendaries. The damage on blocking is rather high as well (considering it avoids damage, while dealing damage) and I think it’s a relatively fun combination of weapons to run around with. Some semi-random something thrown together that I run with now:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fhEQNArcRl0npRt1rxMNcrRiphc2qRRXZSGIRpKB-T1CEABFcgAsb/BQ0Qko6PNp8rN9BAqEEhDQQHaQA4JA8wpAIAwBwv9tv/GY5lXe5lXurHe9hXf9CBIaCA-w

It’s not the best build in the world (and it’s also expensive with the Infusions to hit a perfect 50% Critical Chance and such), but it works fine for solo-PvE, worked alright for roaming a bit in World vs. World too, both alone, with a few friends and with my guild as more of a zerg. More importantly to me right now, is that I find it fun. I get to use the three weapons I want to use.

I tend to swap out the middle Utility for various other skills. Veil if I want more stealth to hide in. Mantra of Pain if I want to AoE-heal rather quickly while dealing damage to a target. Portal if I need to get someone who sucks at jumping/are slow to get into a structure in WvW. For the fun of it, I do actually run Prayer to Lyssa in PvE.. because.. Lyssa and.. I have no real reason, don’t question it.

PS: Oh, and for that cheap new Giant they added in Dry Top, I use Mantra of Concentration.. because it freaking hits twice with the knockback attack it does, which makes it impossible to block to deal damage/create a clone without Stability. Stupid design, but whatever.. it works. You also get to feel like you help out by giving Stability to people and healing them as you charge it up. There’s also that.. if you care for such things. If I feel lazy I slot in Signet of Inspiration there and just forget about it. Sometimes I also use Polymorph Moa as my Elite, since.. it’s funny to turn PvE mobs into birds? No, but really.. it actually helps on some of those new enemy types. We’re kinda awesome at dealing with those. Yay, we’re good at something!

There’s a Dwayna-, Grenth-, Balthazar- and Lyssa backpack. There’s also a Dwayna Bow/Shortbow. We also have Grenth’s Hood. That’s about it.

Grabbing a Custom Arena isn’t exactly expensive if you really like to duel. Share the cost with your friend. I see comments about how PvE should cost something too, well it does, it’s not free to gear up properly, using waypoints and such adds up as well. It is however kinda free to engage in sPvP.

If you want to duel, a Custom Arena may be just the thing you want.

sazberryftw.3809:

I also don’t see how every character in the game see the middle as the Pale Tree. I look at it and that’s FAR from what I would have thought first. I just found it really weird to have my character/the NPCs interpret something a way that seemed odd to me.

Ok, fine, theorize all you want about how the PC may have gotten the knowledge from the Priory, from being a “Commander”, sitting in on meetings, etc.—But are you really saying that when you are not playing the character.. it goes around doing things on its own?

We had no affiliation with the Priory, prior to starting playing the character. We are introduced to the Orders as we progress through the story. We weren’t a Commander. This is all things that has happened as we control the PC. The years before we take control.. doesn’t really matter, we were a nobody, an insignificant person in Tyria. Only after we are taking control of our PC, is it that he/she becomes something greater. And we are a part of it, every step of the way.

Overall, there hasn’t been that poor plot holes in the story presented as far in Guild Wars 2. I’ve cared enough about reading everything and following the story they present to us, and nothing has jarred me as much as this name drop. It came out of nowhere. It didn’t make sense after how Episode 1 ended. It’s like this which we got, should have been Episode 3 and Episode 2 is lost for some reason. For all I know, maybe that is what is wrong here. Maybe we’re missing a whole episode somewhere. I dunno, something feels really off.

The Pale Tree is actually a 7th dragon. Nailed it. We can all go home now.

Yes, I would have rolled a Mesmer. The same way I’ve rolled every profession to cap. I would still main my Mesmer. Because, no matter how frustrated I get over how ArenaNet handles it, the basic mechanics remains the same, it’s a very active profession to play with, and I like that. It’s not that it’s not fun to play, it’s more that it’s inferior to me playing on something else.

Favorite secondary profession.. hmm. In sPvP, I find Ranger with GS+S/D to be quite fun. It’s stupid how much health regen you can get with Dwayna runes and Troll Unguent, so much that people start accusing you of hacking since your health bar doesn’t seem to move as they attack you.

I don’t really have a favorite secondary profession though. I used to play Thief for a while, and Guardian. If I had to select one, Guardian maybe, it’s always been pretty balanced, and ArenaNet hasn’t really nerfed or buffed them all that much. They’re stable I guess, balanced.

I find this so called “competitive tournament” we have in Guild Wars 2 to be extremely boring. Capture the Points.. that’s all they can give us after a years time. Obviously not everyone feels the same way, but I feel that CtP is really boring to play, and it’s even more boring to watch. Anyways;

You have a roamer that can bring people with them using Portal. That’s.. pretty much it. The only real benefit of having a Mesmer in the team right there. The disadvantages is that you are taking a profession that does inferior damage to that of a different roamer. The ability for the profession to teleport up on ledges isn’t unique to the class either, and can be done more frequently with a Thief using a Shortbow, which makes that class more reliable for going between points. Also, Thief has superior damage and can escape more easily if needed, to avoid being put out of the match for periods of time. You know what, use a Thief as a roamer. Not a Mesmer, you’re doing your team a favor.

I love the Mesmer. But I ain’t blind to the fact that we are limited in our use. The only reason I stick with the profession is because it’s an active one. I dodge around a lot more, constantly swap back and forth between weapon sets, utilize my blocks and so on forth. It’s a fun profession, but that doesn’t mean we’re not somewhat dead weight in practically all game modes. Whatever we can do, someone else can more or less do, while still performing far better at say.. damage.

The only unique thing we really have, is Portal, which is extremely limited in its use. It’s a 90 seconds to cooldown skill, with a 10 second window once activated.. it’s not that amazing. In PvE, it’s only good for helping people who are terrible at jumping. That’s pretty much it. In WvW, you use it to get people who are slow at getting into a structure that was captured by the enemy. Oh joy, how fun. I get to hide and stand still in a spot/run to get slowpokes, while my friends are fighting, and you know.. have fun. In sPvP you can use it to get between points and also bring allies with you, that’s pretty decent, but not a must in any way or shape. It still relies on not being on cooldown at the right moments, and a minute and thirty seconds is a pretty long time.

Veil.. eh.. it’s alright. Short duration stealth to avoid being targeted right before a clash. People know roughly where you are anyways, it’s not that amazing. Some people utilize it, but it’s rarely that effective. It’s more useful to stealth up your harassers/roamers using some thieves with Shortbows, blasting their own field(s). I guess it’s nice to have if you run Prismatic Understanding, another stealth to get Regen, Aegis and Protection from.

Is the profession broken, no, but is it viable compared to other professions, not really, and that’s the problem. Why take a Mesmer when another profession can perform better in something that people will value highly, damage, when the Mesmer barely bring anything to the table. We used to be a pretty desired profession, but then we got hit by the nerf bat.. over, and over, and over. It wouldn’t have been so bad, if they had at least resolved one or two of the thirty odd bugs our profession has.. but nope, they’ll just go and “fix” things that nobody complains about instead.

Save the chickens! Make a chicken friend. Go sightseeing around Dry Top.

Sometimes I get a feeling the people saying stuff like “that didn’t have any impact on me”, has never actually lost anyone close to them, so they can’t relate to the feelings another (albeit fictional) character may be feeling at the time. Maybe I’m wrong.

PS: Your whole topic title is a major spoiler..

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Myself, I still fall with a much more safe assumption – people not posting about it probably don’t care about it.

So that’s why my friends in-game are complaining about it, but never once have posted on the forums—because.. I don’t know, they like spending their time in-game rather than on forums?

People care, and people don’t care. Doesn’t change the fact that this has irked some of us. What they could do is slightly alter the beginning of the second episode to.. maybe.. find a new scrap of paper with some ramblings of a “mad woman”, mentioning a dragon and the name it bears. Some small dialogue around this. Call it done. Something other than the PC blurting it out when he/she shouldn’t even really know about it.

If anything, the fact that some of us care about this should be more of a compliment than anything else. We care about the story, the thing they are spending their time crafting away at. We’re paying attention, we pick up on stuff like this because we care.

ColinJohanson.2394:

Great idea, I’d love this too, as would my poor extra finishers I never remember to use.

It’s a great idea, if you can make it not include the limited use finishers you may or may not have at a given time. For permanent ones, awesome option.

Simple explanation, they messed up, it was poorly written.

Basically it goes bla-bla, “dragon”, “Mordremoth”, “don’t know what or who” over the course of two-three dialogue trees. First we out of the blue know and state it’s a dragon, we know it’s Mordremoth and call it by name, then suddenly we don’t know what or who it is that did this and that. It’s a bit of a mess, a bit out of nowhere, and it honestly ruined the story for me. I enjoy the new area expansion (plus the one we can get to which is not supposed to be accessed yet (I guess)), but the way this episode started off, I just couldn’t enjoy it for the story progression. That sudden it’s a dragon and it’s Mordremoth completely ruined it for me.

It doesn’t matter if there are hints to Mordremoth’s existence in the game, that we are all aware that this must be the next dragon we’re ramping up towards. My PC and the NPC heroes has not mentioned it once in the first episode, things are a mystery at the end of it, then suddenly, start the second episode and.. slap, it’s this and that. I know this.. just because. It doesn’t matter if I shouldn’t be certain about it, I am.. because I was poorly written.

I hope the team can go back and do a little bit of altering to either episode 1 or 2, so future players don’t get this inconsistent slap in the face. Perhaps just edit out the whole dragon/Mordremoth part altogether until they actually know what’s going on..

Of course it doesn’t make sense that two legendaries equals a title, while at the very least five equals none. Sure, there was the wardrobe update. Does that change the fact that the duplicate legendary weapon is a legendary weapon? No.. what special treatment/compensation does that really need? It is a second Sword/Dagger/Pistol that you can swap Ascended stats on, regardless if it wears the same skin or not.

I don’t mind the title being added, that’s cool, more titles to the collection, but why isn’t a title for collecting three more legendaries added at the same time. I understand its purpose, to showcase that the two legendaries you wield with the same skin is in fact legendaries and not a legendary and a non-legendary using the skin. But hey, even if I got two Bolts on my Mesmer, it doesn’t mean I can’t dual-wield a fake Incinerator on my Thief and toss up the title making it a “lie”, or I can dual-wield Quip-skins on my Engineer and wear the title too. It’s not going to be entirely accurate as a display of anything other than the fact that I have some form of duplicate legendaries.

TL;DR: Fine, they added one for duplicates, great. But at least add one for having at least 3 more as well.

I got a bit irked off at how we suddenly know it’s a dragon for sure, and specifically which one, and the name of it. Then suddenly we don’t know what or who it is in the same dialogue tree. This LS release feels like a proper mess story wise. I love the area and all, but it’s like nobody paid attention to the story this time.

I totally thought this was a troll topic that’d just say we should all hit our Power Buttons to turn off our PC’s, instead of playing Mesmer with all the bugs we have and the recent fixes.

DuckDuckBOOM.4097:

Sword 3

Summon an illusion that leaps at your target, crippling them. After the intial leap, the clone will execute the Mind Slash sword chain.

Actually, they need to fix the tooltip too, the clone doesn’t leap, it dashes and stops on the way if distracted by a strand of grass, pebble or ants. Let’s get it right here.

@blitzkrieg, Just because some guilds use Mesmers doesn’t mean its optimal. E.g., our damage is terrible compared to that of a roaming Warrior/Thief, who has way more reliable gap closing/Shadowstep abilities and CC, than our iLeap and Blink mechanics. And no, a Shatter build isn’t necessarily a team-spec, get your head out of the sand, it can be just as much a 1-on-1 build. And no again, it doesn’t need more sustain in terms of condition removal, we can do that plenty on our own through our various Utility Skills that is about removing conditions.

Portal is practically useless outside of s/tPvP, besides of course porting people who are terrible at jumping. In some situations you can use it after hiding inside enemy structures in WvW, but that’s a lot of fun, right? Running in and standing around, waiting for several minutes, while your friends run around actually.. you know.. having fun fighting people. Stop touting it as this amazing thing over and over. I wish it was, but it is impossible to find fun/good use for a skill with a 90s CD and a really short 10s window once activated, in anything but s/tPvP to control the points (yawn.. boring PvP game mode is seriously boring).

You also need to understand that people are upset over the fact that we have complained about another issue with iLeap for over a year. The clone in most cases simply does not want to reach your requested target. Because it see a shiny pebble on the ground, or get winded as it see a slight elevation difference. It will either spawn stationary, staring your opponent down, before slowly running casually over, or it will zip about 1/3rds of the way before stopping, standing still and staring at your opponent (or perhaps that shiny pebble), before casually resuming to run slowly over. Nobody, has complained about Mesmers swapping to the location where a clone had been killed. I have never seen anyone complain about that. Plenty of complaints have been made over the terrible pathing of this skill however. And they don’t fix it. They fix something nobody has requested. Something so minor and hardly what I would consider to be a bug. It’s ridiculous, and insulting.

Personally, I don’t care about the change, in 90% of the cases where I use iLeap, or I mean the 5% of the times it actually works, the clone is still alive, it’s not a big deal in that sense for me. I do however find it really angering that they didn’t fix what is blatantly broken, but something nobody has ever cried about. I will still love my Mesmer, because I love the active gameplay I get out of it. But it’s frustrating to see ArenaNet do nothing about actually fixing our class-issues, and it sucks knowing that whatever I do, I am always going to be a weaker version of some other class. This game has no class identity, everyone can do everything and a few classes do everything really well, it’s a bit meh. I want the good old Hexes back. That’d be better than these paper health clones mechanics.

Ok, she may not have weapons that really fits the look (maybe we can get daggers on Mesmer some day, or maybe Belinda Delaqua’s sword skin), but I really like this new costume. It is a bit of a shame that it is a full costume and not individual pieces of gear that we can mix and match, but I’ll take it. Was hungry for something that looked a bit like this for a while. Using Deep Glacial Sky dyes on 3 slots, Abyss on the 1 which is the belt part.

I think it’s perfectly understandable that a good amount of Mesmers are seeing red over this. They are touching a skill we have complained about for over a year now. A skill we have said time and time again is not working, because the clone will in a majority of cases when there is the slightest of difference in elevation between you and the target, aka. not a perfectly flat surface and/or a surface with a pebble in the way, not get to the actual target. It will spawn staring at the target, before slowly running over to it (easy to kill, making the skill rather pointless), or it will run nowhere close to the target before it stops, getting distracted and staring at that pebble at its feet, before coming to its senses and slowly running over to the target (again, high chance of it just getting killed before it can be swapped too).

It’s a slap in the face that they touch the skill, but don’t actually fix the major issue with it. I haven’t seen a single individual, ever, complain about a Mesmer swapping to where a clone had been defeated. I usually swap to an alive clone, but there are times where I obviously can’t, such as in a larger scale encounter within WvW, where the clone will die instantly from Guardians pressing 1 repeatedly with their staves out.

How about you fix the functionality of the skill, ArenaNet, at least make it work reliably. Do that before you touch up on other things that nobody complains about. Nobody in this case would include every other class, not just Mesmers.

I would just like to see a more reliable Blast Finisher added to Mesmer than the freaking timed The Prestige. Mind Stab would be nice, but I’ll take any skill at all, reworked for that purpose.. just something we can activate on demand. Leap Finisher’s are nice and all, but they’re not going to help your team.

With the long duration it stays on the floor, imagine just a small army of Mesmers in World vs. World laying down their Portal Entre, side by side, in a grid formation. Individually, a Portal becomes a rather small thing in radius, but when working together with others, it’s not necessarily that anymore.

There’s no reason as to why you shouldn’t be able to use 1H Sword, even if you plan on using Scepter in the future for trying out a (Torment) shatter build. I run Sword+Torch or Focus and Scepter+Pistol in example, works well for me.

Anyways, when it comes to a Legendary to select, think about which ones you find more visually pleasing before anything else. They are fancy skins in the end, as you are likely to rarely switch the stats on them.

Personally I really like Sunrise, I love how it looks when bouncing around, as we dodge all over the place, etc.—I think the Greatswords looks amazing on Mesmer overall, as we are such an active class that moves around a lot, and that got somewhat exaggerated visual animations in our GS skills. That being said however, it may be worth going for one you will use more, over the one you enjoy the looks of the most. In my case, I’ve stopped using my Sunrise for the time being, even though I thoroughly enjoy the look of it on my Mesmer. Try to find a balance. Don’t get one just to get one, in my opinion, that’s just being silly. I happen to like all the legendaries, but I know not everyone likes Bifrost, not everyone likes Quip, and so on forth. Get one you like, but that you also think you’ll be using. Over time, you can make several, with enough dedication, time and ability to earn Gold to buy- and/or farm materials. It’s not as hard as some players may think. It just takes 3-4 months. For some of them, less.

If you’re a PvP-centered player like myself, I can only recommend that you focus your playtime in WvW, since you can “farm” there while getting the PvP you’re after at the same time. I also enjoy the better stats management you get in that mode, over sPvP.

As a shatter Mesmer you can easily use Staff, that’s fine. I would probably use a Sword for your secondary weapon set regardless though, as that invulnerability-burst is rather good to have. The offhand you can decide on yourself I guess. Some people like Torch for the stealth, others Focus (e.g., to pull thieves & co. out of Shadow Refuge or off cliffs), some like Pistol or even a secondary Sword, but regardless, most of our kind will run Sword main hand on one of the sets.

As for traits, you can go with the more standard 20/20/0/0/30, or a variety of other combinations. I guess the main importance of a standard Shatter build is 10/20/0/0/30 and the remaining 10 points you can distribute where you want. It’s not that you must have Deceptive Evasion either, it just makes things easier to burst. Perhaps give it a go without the clones on dodge. You can learn to create clones and Phantasms relatively quickly, without relying on dodging them into existence. That frees 30 points in total for you to place anywhere else.

From experience, I’d say you should be able to get by just fine with full Berserker. If you want a bit of survivability, go ahead and trade in a few Valkyrie pieces or something of that sorts. Perhaps go ahead and make a more hybrid build altogether, e.g., balancing conditions and physical damage. You can do that with shatter-focused playstyles as well.

I personally enjoy a combination of Dire and Berserker. In the end, I think the best advice anyone can give you, is to try things out. Don’t settle on a single way of playing our profession. There’s so many fun ways to play a Mesmer, and so many things you can make work. Experiment, try think about what downsides there are to a specific build you may have in mind, and then look for ways to improving it. Be that through Runes, Sigils, Traits, weapon choices and/or equipment stats. Trying things out can be very entertaining.

If money’s of a concern, you can get a feel for things in sPvP as well. You don’t have as much control over your stats granted, but you can get a feel for the general idea of a build there. If it works in sPvP, chances are it will be far more effective in WvW.

I don’t quite see why you are stressing that PU is being used defensively. It’s a defensive trait, it’s always going to be used defensively. Still, I find it silly when people complain about it, when they are running everything their profession has, that’s defensive, and “annoying” to fight against. All professions has that something other professions hate.

I absolutely loathe whomever it is on ArenaNet’s team that thinks it’s fine to make time-limited achievements, that has you depending on a hundred+ other players doing what you want to do. Because nothing screams personal skill and the ability to achieve something, like that which is gained from depending on a huge amount of other random players of varying levels, willingness to adapt (e.g., not run around with full Condi-weapon(s)/spec and using buffs/food) and interest in seeing something through.

I bet it’s the same person that decided the Marionette achievements relying on a hundred other players was a good idea (though Marionette ones was way more doable), but wanted you to rely on even more players this time around, during a seriously stupid game design of an encounter which punishes you for using Conditions, when every second skill, every single profession has, deals some sort of freaking Condition. (No really, that’s some brilliant game design right there! . . .)

So much for play how you want to play as well, this is pure zerker-fest oriented. It’s what I consider to be the worst encounter in the LS content (and game as a whole for that matter). With so few days left, and after fails upon fails upon fails at the Six Minutes to Knightfall achievement, spending the entire day attending these stupid encounters (12+ hours a day, 12+ tries, all fails (The stupid Knights are always above 50% when it times out!)), I’m starting to lose hope of achieving this last achievement I’m missing. And with that, this becoming the first LS achievement category I have not fully achieved. The completionist in me is really annoyed by this.

Carighan.6758:

Absconditus.6804:

You’re not alone with the frustration of this achievement. Again someone on the ArenaNet team thinks it’s a good display of individual skill and ability to achieve, to force each individual player to rely on about 149 other players to get an achievement done. I only pray I can get it before it’s too late.

They might also have – correctly – thought that with the achievement having absolutely 0 impact, it’s really not a requirement for everyone to be able to get it.

Let’s be honest and fair then, nothing in Guild Wars 2 has anything but 0 impact on anything, it’s a game. There is no real reason then to play Guild Wars 2 if we’re going to be overly analytical about it. What you play for, and what I play for, may be completely different, I may have goals you do not have and vice versa. One of my goals, is to achieve all the LS achievements. It keeps me going, and keeps me spending money on ArenaNet’s game. That’s a good thing, for ArenaNet and the game at least, right? Does this mean I am against difficult achievements that require teamwork? No, as long as it’s not stupidly put into a time-limited piece of content that’ll go away after two weeks time.

You’re not alone with the frustration of this achievement. Again someone on the ArenaNet team thinks it’s a good display of individual skill and ability to achieve, to force each individual player to rely on about 149 other players to get an achievement done. I only pray I can get it before it’s too late.

Vella’s new hybrid (Dire+Berserker) style. Aimed for a bit of an angelic look.

It’s good for avoiding one stomp, but clever players in pairs will first start one stomp, then start another a bit afterwards so that the second one is guaranteed to stomp you as you pop out of stealth when you’re forced to use it to avoid that first stomp. It is extremely rare that you get placed anywhere decent in the random teleport, and it is almost always guaranteed to be in range for a as-you-come-out-of-stealth stomp.

As for fooling anyone, at least for World vs. World, unless ArenaNet lets the clones display your food buffs and such, even if they were to remove that idiotic huge arrow over our heads (Just why, ArenaNet? Are you actually trying to insult your players intelligence, thinking/saying they can’t make out what is a Mesmer and what is a clone, without such a blatant visual aid?) and make the clone and you appear out of stealth at the same time, it’ll never be hard to see who is the actual Mesmer, and who is the clone. Does target have food/signet buffs? Yes? Ok, real Mesmer. No? Ok, clone, let’s stomp the other target.

I really wish clones would show up just like you do to the enemy, buffs and all. Clones are supposed to be a tiny bit of a confusion factor while fighting a Mesmer, right? It’s about the only reason I can see them being so extremely squishy for. As-is, they hardly are making fighting a Mesmer any more confusing, unless you’re new to the game.

While not exactly bursty in the same way you burst using shatters, I do run a build focused on perhaps a bit excessive survivability recently, while still maintaining some degree of pressure, using full Dire equipment. 0-0-30-20-20 with Scepter+Torch/Staff. Initially I was running around with Perplexity Runes, but quickly started to miss the permanent 25% Movement Speed from Traveler Runes and promptly switched over to those again. I also felt a bit “naked” not having the Deceptive Evasion at first, but have grown accustomed to it now.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fgAQNArfWnUEVUbUNy0wWbkw0jgjcgfSBzlOKFXP7A-jEDBYfJDXUQkWAkkOQ0HJLTtIaslhFRjVJjIqWpEzqDwYWRzgO1SBAz0I-w

The clones I try to keep out are my Staff clones, as they are relatively obvious as a better choice for applying conditions over the Scepter ones (by all means, my opponents are welcome to kill them of course, though I prefer getting my buffs from the bounce). I don’t really do shatters unless I feel I need to, e.g., Distortion. With full Corruption and Guard stacks, the Condition damage stays around 2500+/- with a few Might stacks gained now and again. I try to make sure that The Prestige’s blast is hitting my opponent(s) as well as my Chaos Storm, that I Phase Retreat on that same Chaos Storm right before it times out, and then lastly push out the #4 Chaos Armor Staff skill, once that previous Chaos Armor from the Combo Leap is about to time out, giving a good amount of Chaos Armor up time in total. Luckily my opponents tends to trigger the Torment-block from Illusionary Counter before I need to swap to Staff after using The Prestige (a lot of players try to locate you through auto-attacking near where you stealthed, use it to your advantage and run into them at the appropriate time when they do). If I need to use Null Field, I always try to blast/leap on it as well. I haven’t settled on this build yet, and are still toying around with traits, but do want to stick with the Dire gear, one because making Ascended takes time, two because I don’t really necessarily want to rely on Sharper Images and crits, and three, survivability.

The idea is to be able to more comfortably engage small groups for 1vX and/or to run in the melee train when playing with the guild (with some stuff swapped out, e.g., adding Veil and Time Warp, etc.). It’s a different approach to the build I used a long time ago which focused on Retaliation using Soldier stats.

PS: It took some time for me to stop popping Signet of the Ether when reaching lower health. You can quite easily regain a lot of your HP even when as low as 2k HP, by utilizing the stealth options to either regenerate the health back, or to get far enough away to trigger the health regen from being OoC (your target should have conditions on them that prevents them from regaining as much health as you can, before you start the pressure again). I’m starting to like the heal quite a bit.

I made it specifically for Mesmer, because I didn’t want to get annoyed at the pew-pew sounds. That one bullet is enough for me. It still has a great aura for you and your clones, and it does provide you with footstep effects.

Finished the Condition skins for Vella. Not entirely sure about every piece yet, nor about Dyes (Charred and Abyss for the most part, with a bit of Swampblack thrown in there too), and I do know it looks a bit more like a Necromancer than a Mesmer.

drkn.3429:

Manuhell.2759:

Well, now you know how people that bought the old digital deluxe upgrade felt when they added heroic edition items to new purchases of the digital deluxe upgrade.

Except i received the heroic stuff upon that update, myself being a digital deluxe pre-purchaser. A chest with shiny set of profane armour along with some boosters and bags arrived to me via in-game mail.

I sure didn’t get that. Anyways on-topic, I think ultimately it would be wiser to quickly remove the ability of the new Watchwork Mining Pick to have a chance at gaining sprockets. Adding Azurite to Molten, Candy Corn from Halloween pick, etc. will just make the idea of it being a convenience item fly out the window for me. You’re, as others bring up, then stepping on the Pay 2 Win territory with these items—even though I don’t necessarily find it fair for GW2 to be called a P2W title at any rate, considering its provided ability to convert Gold -> Gems.

It no longer is simply an convenience to have these gathering tools however, if it is something that gives you an advantage, however small it may be, over someone who does not have them. Granted, Boosters are already touching upon this territory, albeit it is minor in most cases with it mainly being convenience buffs speeding up things. It won’t bother me too much if nothing is done about it, but I do understand that players such as myself who has purchased the Molten Alliance Mining Pick, might be a little annoyed that suddenly a new one appears that gives you a drop that you can not get otherwise out in the world as you mine.

Vella was toying around over at the Practice Dummies in Lion’s Arch. The fun of being a Mesmer. (To answer the “question” below; 4593h played. Some Gold are from Gems -> Gold, some from TP flips, some are just through lucky drops. Then there’s all the hours spent playing the game, where you gain it from pretty much anything you do. All but the Scepter (don’t ever get drunk while playing Guild Wars 2…) has been crafted through Mystic Forge, 2-4 months apart.)

Game’s been fine for me until today. My friends in Norway have been complaining about lag the past couple weeks, but I wasn’t experiencing this issue myself. Today it hit me as well. However, a restart of the game resolved it. Then it came back again when I loaded into a new zone, restarting resolved it, etc.—maybe there’s something that bugs out during loading that is causing these extreme latency issues?

If you’re willing to spend the Gold for it, I think the Traveler set is the better option.

Double-tap for the most part, Spacebar+V if I wish to dodge-jump.

Don’t forget Feedback and traited Focus. Those are absolutely something to consider when running with a organized group. It can really hurt the ranged efforts of your opponents when you have a few Mesmers to help with the reflecting. I hardly find Mesmer to suck in raids. There’s plenty of utility that you can bring to the table as a Mesmer, beyond Veil, Time Warp and Portals. Chaos Armor is also seemingly grossly underestimated, get your group to start blasting your Ethereal fields.

It doesn’t take much for the Illusionary Leap to bug out, causing the clone to slowly run over to your target, something it hardly will really be able to do, if the target is running the opposite direction. It can really be as little as slight bumps in the map, or tiny inclines of a slope that causes it to just run in place as it spawns. I use it all the time though, as I switch constantly between my weapon sets, so I guess I notice it a lot because of that.

It’s the same way the game sometimes bugs out and can basically completely kill you when you run down these same tiny inclinations in elevation. I’ve had that happen to me a couple times, on what feels like a relatively flat surface, and I find it hilarious every time it happens, as it is so ridiculous that I can’t help but find it funny and start laughing out loud.

Anyways, I’d much rather see Illusionary Leap teleport the clone directly on to your target, the same way a Thief will teleport on their target with Infiltrator’s Strike. I guess the intent is to make it readable, but there’s other ways of doing that. Sounds, Blink-effect on the clone as it spawns on your target, etc.—I don’t see why it has to sprint over to your target. It somewhat looks cool when it works I guess, but it’s annoying when it bugs out.