Guild Wars 2

Oh, don’t even go there with comparing it to the Mesmer Signet. Mesmer’s need to have 3 illusions out for any regenerative effect to be active what so ever, that’s three extremely squishy illusions that can be broken by just looking harshly at them, and they still get less HP/s than what Warriors are getting. Mesmer’s also get their HP every 3 seconds (around ~1000), not every second. The active effect is nice, as it does let you create another Phantasm right away, which can be great for burst, but it also heals for a relatively puny ~5.6k with a THIRTY-FIVE second cooldown. At best you can trait it to be a 28s CD on it. That’s an extremely long time to go without any sort of healing.

Also, it’s not so much the Healing Signet alone that is making people angry, it’s the combined effect of the signet WITH the Adrenal Health and Regen. That’s when it starts getting annoying. Not every profession has reliable ways to apply Poison either. Poison doesn’t last forever, but usually for short durations, and it doesn’t stop healing altogether.

For a profession that already has the highest tier HP, heavy armor, extreme/great damage, extreme distance coverage (making them able to just laugh if they get anywhere near low health as they zip away)—that they also have some of the strongest HP/s in the game is frustrating. They are already strong as-is. Why should Warriors get to have the cake and eat it too? Why aren’t there any gives and takes? My Warrior gets to be good at everything all at once. I don’t like it, and I sure don’t like fighting against it on my other characters.

This meet and greet is on the reset evening/night for World vs. World. Which is a shame, I’d love to meet more fellow Mesmer clones.

I went ahead with Berserker, since I prefer the raw damage over conditions, especially in PvE. I also use it in World vs. World for that matter (full zerk, since Mesmer has decent defensive skills), so it wasn’t too hard a choice for me to make.

I’d much rather have spent my time working on a Legendary set of armor though. I would love being able to switch stats out of combat and play more with builds while having a single set or armors and trinkets.

I think what it really needs is some good old bug fixing. Like.. Illusionary Leap -> Swap, it should be about time that they look into resolving that.

There aren’t all that many professions besides Warriors that I find annoying to fight to be honest. But I find Warriors annoying to fight on any profession these days, as they got so much health regeneration, the highest health pool in the game, that great damage mitigation they’ve always had, excellent CC, that idiotic extreme distance coverage letting them laugh as they run when you get them anywhere near low on health, and on top of that, why not give them great damage to boot. Who needs to give and take, just take everything and smile as you fly around the battlefields. Well, and I don’t like fighting Necromancers, but who does really?

I do think we could do with some CD reductions on A LOT of our utilities/skills to be honest. They’re pretty much all on wee bit too long cooling periods, even when traited. Especially for what they provide, which isn’t in most cases all that amazing. E.g., I can Mantra myself roughly 4 seconds of Stability. Ok, so it counts as two stun breakers on a single skill too, but I still got a long CD on it, about 3s to ready it up, and ultimately a worthless source for Stability. Arcane Thievery is fun, but it “only” steals 3 Boons and transfers 3 conditions. It’s not going to save you against a condition-heavy opponent. The CD is a wee bit too long with its 45 seconds.

Doesn’t help we get pigeonholed into using specific utilities either, which hardly helps us survive should we need it. Going to WvW? Be prepared to Portal, be prepared to Veil, be prepared to Feedback, oh and even though you just filled all your slots, be prepared to Null Field too, because why not.

I’d love to see more control options for Mesmer. We have Daze (with trait to make it a Stun, but that’s pretty much the same thing when talking about 1 second), Confusion (which Engineers are better at applying than us..) and a tiny little 2 second Immobilize. Halting Strike is rather good, and through active play you can punish your opponent(s) which is a lot of fun. But I wish there was more of the good old stuff from Guild Wars. More of the good old Hexes and their synergy.

I personally run full Berserker with Traveler Runes (25% Movement is.. well, great for a rather slow-moving profession otherwise, and it does give the same effect as having 3xDivinity Runes, so I find them to be relatively alright on the offense-side too). I tend to run GS or Staff (as I just finished Bifrost, I tend to use Staff a lot more these past couple days), and Sword+Torch.

30 (I, II, XII) — 20 (IV, X) — 20 (III, X) — 0 — 0 on the traits for Halting Strikes and Confounding Suggestions, which makes Chaos Storm awesome, even in PvE, more so in WvW. Damage comes from a combination of shattering, Blurred Frenzy, The Prestige (I tend to just break the Stealth, as I’m after the burst, which triggers anyways) and interrupts. It may seem like Staff is more of a condition-type weapon, which in a way it is, but it also works very well with physical builds. Great for clone-creation, good defenses, and with the interrupt damage, good offense. The Phantasm also deals “insane” single-target damage when there’s a lot of conditions on your enemy.

You can use it quite effectively in a Shatter build. Allows you to gain Regen and Protection with Chaos Armor, which you can summon to yourself through Phase Retreat, The Prestige (if you use a Torch in the second set) and Illusionary Leap > Swap (Sword in the second set) in the Chaos Storm and from the #4 skill itself of course. Phase Retreat makes for a quick way to create Clones to Shatter with as well. Should work pretty well with the standard 20(I)/20(X)/0/0/30(XI) build(s).

There’s also still that fundamental flaw in the way our clones doesn’t carry our Boons as well. If we have Boons on us, if we have kill and/or guard stacks, food, we alone show up with these to the enemy. This makes it incredibly easy to tab to the Mesmer. You could use Signet of Inspiration to take care of the Boon thing, albeit very limited, but kill and/or guard stacks and food buffs, that’ll easily show the enemy who you are.

It’s pretty obvious ArenaNet doesn’t want us to blend in. We even get a bloody huge red arrow over our head when downed in what is already a pretty terrible downed state. I’ll apply confusion to someone that is about to stomp me, which is not going to damage me at all and take any confusion damage, excellent tactic! Let me teleport away a bit, oh woops, that’s random, you may end up teleporting on the spot. Good thing I spawned a clone, oh right, I have a huge red arrow over my head to single me out, not to mention the clone appears instantly, and it’s pretty easy to see that one character that just popped out of stealth—Why the arrow, ArenaNet? The Phantasm is actually good though, that damage is insane. Just a shame we hardly ever get to summon it.

Lily.1935:

Absconditus.6804:

You can stack plenty of Bleeds with the GS clones and Sharper Images as well. Easier to create those than waiting around for a Phantasm. Engineer’s does not have a hard time applying conditions, saying that is almost like not knowing what a profession is capable of. They even put up faster Confusion than Mesmers are able to do, they got Burns, Cripples, Bleeds, Poison, etc. and can quickly apply them. The Mesmer also doesn’t suffer if built for Conditions for that matter. I just don’t like Conditions, and don’t tend to run with these in mind myself. I find the game to be way too much Condition Wars already, where conditions are doing as much damage as direct power, but additionally allowing you to build yourself into a bunker. It’s poor design.

Also keep in mind that shorter duration conditions, when they can be applied often, is a good thing. If you can have a Burn that ticks for 1 second and deals 4000 damage, or a Burn that ticks for 5 seconds (focusing a bit more on duration and not all on damage) and deals 4000 damage, the 1 second Burn wins. The longer a condition lasts, the more chance of it being cleansed, rendering it less effective.

You don’t like conditions, I love conditions. And many people agree with you and many agree with me. Also, Like I’ve said, I’ve made this suggestion before. I also suggested it with a boon that reduces condition damage. Because the way to counter conditions shouldn’t be COMPLETE IMMUNITY TO THEM. I’m looking at you Elementalist.

I actually do like conditions, I phrased it a bit poorly, I mean that I don’t like to use them myself, or to build into using them, but they do make the game more interesting. What I don’t like is how you can basically go into full Dire with Condition Damage, Vitality and Toughness, and still maintain damage that is comparable to—and in ways better than—that of say a glassier cannon who focuses on Power, Precision and Critical Damage. Easy fix? Make Toughness reduce damage on conditions as well, as in your clothing are wrapped tightly around your body to prevent excessive bleeding, not enough poison got through to properly damage you, etc.—I do not see why there needs to be a boon that can be stripped for reducing condition damage, although they could just as well make Protection affect conditions too. Toughness is a permanent decrease to physical damage, there should be one for conditions too.

If someone goes into any form of an invulnerable state (e.g., Distortion, Endure Pain, Renewed Focus, Mist Form, etc.), conditions still gets to deal damage too. Whoever is not doing conditions however, they’re locked out of damaging these individuals for this time period. I find the way it’s implemented, with the amount of damage it does (that can’t be mitigated—Vitality is not a mitigation, it doesn’t change the damage you take), to be unbalanced, that’s what I don’t like about conditions.

Phantasms are transparent, you and your clones aren’t. It’d be a long shot to expect it to cause too much confusion on what is a Phantasm and what is a clone/the Mesmer. There is a bug/glitch/“feature” where if you stealth them, they do appear as regular clones however.

Wait, are we still back in 2012? Like, when Pistol Whip was actually remotely decent outside of PvE? It’s become such a useless skill after they nerfed the stun on it, to the point of which you will barely get hit by any of the hits. It’s kinda like hundred-blading Warriors, they’re way too easy to just avoid.

Leo Paul.1659:

I dislike how we can’t do anything against people on top of walls in wvw.

Got to agree with this one. It is seriously annoying to try attack anything that is on top of a wall these days, as most professions to be honest. Back in the early days this was no problem, but I guess people complained enough, e.g., about our Phantasms spawning on them. On the flipside, it is also somewhat difficult to attack down from a wall as well. You can still hit people on the walls, as long as they jump up on them, which they in most cases needs to do in order to attack down. I usually look for someone about to get up on the wall, and then spawn iZerker and a clone from Mirror Blade on them up there before a Mind Wrack.

You can stack plenty of Bleeds with the GS clones and Sharper Images as well. Easier to create those than waiting around for a Phantasm. Engineer’s does not have a hard time applying conditions, saying that is almost like not knowing what a profession is capable of. They even put up faster Confusion than Mesmers are able to do, they got Burns, Cripples, Bleeds, Poison, etc. and can quickly apply them. The Mesmer also doesn’t suffer if built for Conditions for that matter. I just don’t like Conditions, and don’t tend to run with these in mind myself. I find the game to be way too much Condition Wars already, where conditions are doing as much damage as direct power, but additionally allowing you to build yourself into a bunker. It’s poor design.

Also keep in mind that shorter duration conditions, when they can be applied often, is a good thing. If you can have a Burn that ticks for 1 second and deals 4000 damage, or a Burn that ticks for 5 seconds (focusing a bit more on duration and not all on damage) and deals 4000 damage, the 1 second Burn wins. The longer a condition lasts, the more chance of it being cleansed, rendering it less effective.

I would love to see Dagger. Having a sort of assassin-type Phantasm, some cripple and/or “parrying” skills (Evade) like with most other professions daggers, feel free to throw some Poison in on it as well, would be nice to have the option to be a bit more effective at heal-crippling. I feel Daggers also would fit in with Mesmer, unlike perhaps any of the two Bow-types or the Hammers.

I personally love how Sunrise looks on Mesmer. The way the trail follows your Mirror Blade while it bounces and as you dodge around, summon iZerker, etc. is.. well, mesmerizing. I find it far more beautiful to look at on my Mesmer than with most other professions.

If you’re looking to pick up a Legendary, think about what weapon(s) you tend to use the most. What will you get more joy out of, because you are using it often?

Vella Absconditus has also been collecting her Ascendant (title) armor set. I quite like the look on the female Light set to be honest. Colors are subject to change however. I was going for a look that seems suitable to my active playstyle, which includes dodging at a frequent rate all over the ground, so something a bit more durable and that covers up my skin to protect me. I really like that the female Light Ascended gear looks like it is made out of leather. Edit: Settled on Celestial, Deep Glacial Sky, Midnight Blue, Midnight Ice, Abyss, Flare and Black for the time being. Added second image with new dye composition, though it’s overall the same look.

I’ve gone full Berserker. I don’t really tend to use Conditions all that much, as they are pretty much “pointless” in PvE, and I would rather have something I can use both in PvE and WvW. For that matter I run full Berserker trinkets and weapons. I’ve used the armor Infusion slots to gain a little more Toughness with Resilient Infusions. It’s like getting slightly less than a second set of boots worth of Toughness (30), not a huge deal, but every little bit helps.

Works fine for me in PvE, and works just as well in WvW, both when roaming alone, with a few friends or in the guild group during prime time. Only used it once in a GvG, but at least I didn’t die while dishing out the damage, heh.

As others point out, it’s far easier to exchange your trinkets, so if I wish to get some more defense, more conditions and/or a hybrid, I can exchange the stats on the trinkets. With my weapons being Legendary, I can switch the stats at will for those too, though I probably wouldn’t.

scerevisiae.1972:

Instead of finding reasons to remove it (there have been many raised), ask yourself, what does it actually bring to the game that’s positive or beneficial to the PVP side of the game?

Well personally I find it to be an interesting mechanic, in the sense that it is a strategic element to the PvP combat, getting your team members revived should they go down. Or on the flipside, to deny the other team from reviving their team members. With the varying power that differs from profession to profession and their downed states, this can be a bit annoying to deal with granted, but overall I do like that it’s not just mindless combat. I feel it adds to it.

There’s more to stomping than just running over and hitting a button. Can the profession you’re stomping teleport away (e.g., Thief)? Have someone stomp that can also teleport should they move during the stomp. Can they fear, knock you back, and/or otherwise interrupt you? Stomp with someone that has Stability. Mist form from Elementalists? Can’t really stop it from happening, but you can deny them from actually going anywhere by Immobilizing them. Mesmer going to disappear on you for a short duration? Have one persons start the stomp, then another shortly after, chances are they appear again just as the second person is landing the stomp, and chances are within range as well. There’s strategic gameplay to get out of it in other words, involved in something as simple as a stomp.

Underwater is the only place I find downed state seriously annoying, and where I think they can really do changes to make PvP under water more enjoyable. Otherwise I find it to be an rather alright mechanic. But sure, from time to time I wish I could just off myself instead of waiting in downed state, especially when smart players in sPvP keeps you laying there and don’t finish you off, prolonging the time it takes before you can actively get back into the combat, perhaps they could add a suicide skill. Still, prolonging the duration a player is out of combat with keeping them as long as you can in downed state is also a strategic element to the combat we have.

The fact that you get absolutely no WXP in there makes me not all that interested in playing around in it, when I could just as well find fights as I run around killing the warg/wurm/harpy, sentries and capturing camps. I’d say it’s easier to get fights when capturing camps also. Usually someone comes running to defend it.

I find the design to be alright, and as such I like the ruins aesthetically. I just don’t want to “waste” my time in there when I ain’t getting properly rewarded for it. I only go through to get the two sentries. The buff I may capture with other roamers from my guild every now and again, but it’s pretty rare that we care about it.

I think a lot of Mesmers are taking the relatively new stats for Traveler Runes into their builds. At least you get 3 parts of a Divinity Rune set, so 30 to all stats, 6% Critical Damage, 25% Movement Speed (without sacrificing a Utility slot, which is something other professions such as Thief must do), 15% Boon Duration and 10% Condition Duration. The latter are perhaps not as interesting, but I do enjoy the fact that the profession is no longer a slowpoke with these Runes slotted, and I find it hard to see myself switching away from them anytime soon.

As for if the Rune of the Pack bonuses are bugged or not, wouldn’t really be able to say, as I’ve never used those.

I don’t think the whole mechanic needs to go, as it’s a strategic part of World vs. World engagements. More strategic combat options, the better. But it should definitely be tweaked a bit so that the Lord gets a debuff that prevents him from getting banner’d back up as soon as he goes down again. Once every 5 minutes or something would perhaps work, if not 10 minutes.

As others point out, I would hate for the game to become even more of a “Let’s hide in our structure(s) and fire siege instead of actively engaging in combat where we can take damage back”. This is already some servers way of playing World vs. World, and I quite honestly hate fighting against them, I find it tremendously boring.

Zikory.6871:

… That and some guilds want to keep there numbers low, they don’t want to be the map zerg.

This is exactly why 99.3% of the organized guilds do not run with a Commander tag. While we do want a tag option for our guild to use—instead of having to call target on our “Commander”, losing a vital organizing skill that could be used in combat—we do not want to become yet another big zerg/blob/bus/train roaming around. There’s no guild pride in defeating someone when you outnumber them 3:1. There’s however much pride to be gained from defeating someone 1:3. Most long-time WvW players are also well aware of how lagged the server gets (skill lag) when massive blobs clash in certain choke points such as a Keep or Stonemist. We want to avoid it as much as we can.

If you want ArenaNet to look at something in relation to downed state, have them look at underwater downed state, as it’s ridiculous how you take someone out, then they get to just swim around with their second healthbar, with no option for stomping them. E.g., Rangers are a absolute royal pain because of their downed state pet-ress, which is triple as effective under water.

Revamp underwater combat, including better ways of dealing with downed players, and give us a whole WvW map situated under water. I love underwater combat in general, it just needs some tweaking and polishing.

I somewhat see our Distortion as a Stability, a upgraded version of it since it also evades all attacks. On one-handed sword, that can be traited to be 2 seconds out of every 9-ish seconds. Sure, it’s not long in duration, but if I really want Stability as a Boon, I’ll steal it using Arcane Thievery, from whoever I’m fighting. And if they don’t have Stability either, then fine, I’ll keep dodging and using Distortion as my way of getting away from some CC.

Those with access to Stability doesn’t always get to keep it. I know my foes in sPvP and WvW doesn’t. I always steal it from them, that’s mainly why I carry Arcane Thievery amongst my Utilities in the first place.

Just wish Traveler runes was in sPvP. At least I get to use them in PvE and WvW.

1) Illusionary Leap’s clone getting stuck in place if there is a slight slope between you and your target.
2) Illusionary Wave’s knockback more often than not knocking foes (NPC/Player) down on the spot, instead of the advertised distance of 450.

Bonus! (is this “cheating”?):
- A lot of our skills has an extremely narrow cone where you must look directly at your target in order to prevent the skill from going on a small recovery CD (4s). If a player sidesteps ever so slightly, this happens often. This is mainly a problem in how active you are as a player when playing a Mesmer. If you don’t move yourself while using the skills, your character will turn towards the target, but still, I find it annoying. Examples of skills that are troublesome; Mirror Blade, Magic Bullet.
- Mantra cast times are such a drag, nearly 3 seconds to ready up your “spells” while you must just run in circles trying to avoid damage and interrupts, is not my cup of tea.
- Our Elite skills are rather underwhelming. Mass Invisibility is just that, a really long CD invisibility skill. Time Warp is alright, but for what it provides I find the effect:CD ratio to be rather disappointing, and would rather not slot it in. Moa is pretty much pointless. You may take someone out of the equation for a short period of time, but you can’t really hurt them when they can just zip away evading anything you throw their way.
- Deceptive Evasion trait spawns clones on random (closest) targets, instead of who you have targetted. This makes Shatters somewhat ineffective in a lot of cases when there are PvE mobs scattered all over, e.g., WvW. Spawn them on the Mesmer’s target, not some random friendly creature nearby..
- Illusions do not have your buffs, so it is extremely easy for someone experienced to pick out who the real Mesmer is out of the clones around. Just quickly look for the food buffs, guard stacks and/or weapon stack buffs. Can’t really play smart and “hide” in your clones, making them just shatter fodder and not a illusionary distraction.
- Very poor mobility overall, without Traveler Runes I would probably not be back to maining my Mesmer again.

There’s other shortcomings/annoyances to the profession, but I ain’t sure if my Bonus is “cheating”, so I’ll stop with these. My main annoyances are the two I listed by numbers.

There are arguably some Utilities that I do still find to be a bit of a drag to use, namely Mantras. It’s not that they aren’t good, as they can be traited to heal and provide you as well as your team with support, but the cast time on them.. too long for my liking. Running in a circle to avoid interrupts and damage and/or standing still for nearly 3 seconds to channel them up can be a bit.. well boring, in an otherwise very active profession. Just wish the channeling of them would be a bit faster. Again though, that’s not to say they aren’t useful, they’re just boring (to me).

Pretty much all the other Utilities are excellent however. Admittedly I do tend to fall back on Decoy, Arcane Thievery and Blink though. And I would in some ways say our Elites aren’t the most exciting in the world, I hardly ever actually use the Elite skill I got slotted.

Mass Invisibility is to me on of the better ones, but that too isn’t exactly exciting. It’s just a slightly long stealth, more of a “Crud, I got to get out of here” kind of thing. It does make for a, once-every-so-often, stomp denial too though. Someone on your team get downed? Is your enemies trying to stomp your friend? Quickly pop Mass Invisibility and resurrect them. A bit limited in use, but it works fairly often. Time Warp, while cool on paper, isn’t all that useful in my book either. It is a Ethereal field, a massive one, which is nice if you wish to get Chaos Armor on people, and it does speed you (and your clones/allies) up, but overall, I find its effect:CD ratio to be a little bit too poor to be considered an Elite skill. Moa, while funny, is rather useless. The person you Moa can zip away instantly, evading everything you throw at them, so beyond it looking funny, it’s actually a rather terrible Elite in my opinion. Perhaps good against those that don’t know what skills they get on their bar, and to take one person out of the equation for a limited time, but otherwise rather pointless. I somewhat wish there would be some improvement done to the Elite skills, but other than that, Mesmer is by far the profession I find the most fun to play, and the one I play the most actively in combat as. Dodging all the time, Shattering, using every skill I got at my disposal.

On a slightly related note, while it makes sense, I do find the reliance on having illusions up for traits and utilities to be more effective (or useful at all, I’m looking at you Signet of Ether), whilst these clones are so squishy (one-hit kills in most cases), to be a bit of an annoyance as well. I also dislike that your illusions are not displayed with your buffs when targeted (they are super squishy, it is easy to notice you are not hitting the right target). I guess it may be a wee bit too overpowered if it isn’t easy to spot the Mesmer beyond noticing how movement is done, but any experienced player will have you targeted as the real Mesmer within the blink of an eye, because of the buffs (e.g., Bloodlust/Guard Stacks) not showing on your illusions. At least they show your title now, and at least enemies can’t see your World Completion star, but overall, that doesn’t do much when food buffs and stacking ones are only displayed on the real player. I absolutely loathe how Deceptive Evasion creates a clone on the closest target to you, not who you have targeted, making Shatters less effective in several cases. Illusionary Leap has been severely bugged since, well forever, with slight slopes making the clone just run in the spot it spawns, then slowly running over to your target, highly ineffective. Our blinks has a tendency to once in a while send us into the void as well (as in, fall through the geometry). Several of our attacks require us to look pin-perfect directly at our targets too, if the side-strafe just the slightest, our attack goes on a small CD to recover. Examples of this is Mirror Blade on the Greatsword. Another skill on the Greatsword that’s pretty inconsistent is the Illusionary Wave. It advertises knocking your target with a distance of 450, but all too often does it just knock them in the spot they’re standing in. At least it seems to always work on thieves in Shadow Refuge, so at least it’s consistent there.

The profession has it’s problems, but it’s still a very fun one. It really starts to shine around Lv.40. It was my first character to 80, and while I have switched my main to other professions from time to time, I always find myself going back to Mesmer.

Jólnir Langbardr is from time to time popping into Aurora Glade’s cities, giving away Giant Wintersday Gifts and/or Lumps of Coal, depending on if he deems you naughty or nice, if not something in between. Festivoo the Merry is a excellent helper, re-stocking his gifts and coal when needed.

Fun fact: He’s a Thief.

At least you will be able to use a Transmutation Splitter on it, if you at some point should you wish to revert the skin to the Fractal Capacitor (Infused) skin again. There’s always that too to keep in mind. If seen as a skin, it’s a highly expensive skin for sure, but there’s a whole lot of expensive skins in the market today anyways.

ArenaNet, Ascended breathing masks, when? Only remaining slot.

Gnat.9405:

What armor is that lol

Town clothes: Festive Hat from last years Wintersday, and the rest of it seems to be the Fancy Winter Coat, Fancy Winter Boots, Fancy Winter Gloves and Fancy Winter Leggings (though leggings, boots and gloves could perhaps be something else I guess), which is also from last years Wintersday (probably going up on sale before Christmas I would imagine).

You could always see it as an expensive skin. It should be perfectly possible to use Transmutation Crystals to put it onto a (Infused) backpack. I already got a upgraded backpack, I wouldn’t want to upgrade yet another one when I can just transmute it and save myself the Gold. I simply see it as a perk that it allows you to select stats if you in example have no interest in Fractals and don’t need the Agony Resistance.

Zedd.8239:

Well that is a serious pain. I was hoping to complete my endless tonics (the Princess Doll in particular) and now I’m stuck not being able to do that because I didn’t have the foresight last year to buy one of each. Awesome.

I would recommend looking into the Endless Toymaker’s Tonic instead. Gives you all forms, and the Gift Dolyak form as well. It’s random, but less inventory clutter. Should be able to find it on the Trading Post.

I don’t think this specific Miniature is one to get too worked up about, it can be obtained within the game for Gold. Mini Mr. Sparkles however, that was something different. Expecting players to go to PAX and Gamescom in order to not have their collection broken.. yeah, how about.. no. ArenaNet made me sell my entire collection of minis because of that one blunder. I am no longer a collector, and I am no longer spending real money (nor Gold for that matter) on their added minis to the Gem Store. (I did buy the recent one to get the Puppy, which I actually use all the time, but that’s probably the last that I’ll ever buy.)

Sure, they are now giving Mr. Sparkles to those that purchase at least 4000 Gems within the duration of December, but it’s a little bit too late when I have already skipped on other packs is it not (Edit: Urgh.. the censorship of the combination of isn’t and it is getting really annoying..)? Now I have a even larger hole in my collection should I start collecting again.

Poor business sense on that one, ArenaNet. Oh well, less money I spend on the game, their loss, not mine. Only thing that annoys me is that I had a long-term goal of collecting them all, but I’ll live without one goal in the game.

Can log in as well now, but experiencing a lot of the Connection Lost message booting me out to character selection. Not exactly fun to play. Nothing else on my network is lagging up for me, so I guess it’s something to do with the dying hamster in the server room. I would recommend looking into badgers, ArenaNet, they’re supposedly a lot more sustainable.

It gives us something to look forwards to during each years Wintersday. It was here last year, I would be surprised if it’s not here next year.

Just wish to give ArenaNet a huge holiday thanks for letting me enjoy this content without feeling stressed to rush through it before it’s forever gone again (well in this case, it’ll appear again next year of course). Having it around for over a month after all these bi-weekly updates is such a relief.

Regina Buenaobra.6193:

Amar.1547:

I can see why they wont let you join mayem with a group, easy to dominate and becomes to competitive. But the bell one would be cool, same with the puzzle, set up a group race thing!

Correct. Specifically for Snowball Mayhem (a PvP activity), allowing group join would allow pre-made parties to face-off against random match-ups, which would result in very lopsided matches. While a matchmaking system for Snowball Mayhem would be nice, it was outside the scope for this release.

To be somewhat fair here, you guys had a whole year to create a system (read: use an already existing system) that allowed for “premade” setups, so players could play with their friends. The mini-game is the exact same as it was last year. It wouldn’t be all that different from Team- and Solo Queue in sPvP. Not sure why you’re not using your already existing frameworks to accommodate for players wanting to play with their friends. It’s already using the hotjoins framework, is it not?

Was just exiting sPvP and the game gave me a error message, popped me out to desktop and the launcher showed up. After that I haven’t been able to log in either, as I’m just getting Error Code: 42:6:3:2151.

Keep in mind that Veil has been updated to actually be a Combo Field: Light, and is no longer Ethereal like it was wrongfully(?) before. This means you have two fields now that you can use to build Retaliation with, using Sword+Focus and Staff. The build should still be doable.

Alejandro.3285:

Ultimately its guild wars right?

Yeah, The Guild Wars.

I don’t see how limiting guilds will help, it will annoy and frustrate. You can easily run around without wearing a guild tag too, so that’s not really doing much. Can’t exactly start not allowing players without a tag to enter WvW either. Don’t really think this is a solution to anything. WvW is and always will be, unbalanced.

We also got Obsidian Sanctum for GvG currently, so at least they have provided a alternative location from the actual Borderlands. But.. I do hope they put some more effort into this desired game mode. Currently there are whole guilds that “troll” other guilds that just wish to duke it out in the arena. A larger-scale mode of what was present in GW1 would be nice. Lords on each side, holding the center point to reduce death penalties, etc.

But the Golems are our friends, they protect our beloved structures!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CERverazPf0

I find it surprising that I’ve been able to gain all these PvE things while mostly being a WvW player—Well.. I do Guild Missions once a week too, and I do Living Story achievements, perhaps a dungeon when I need tokens for a Legendary.—But you make it sound impossible to, you know, play WvW as your main focus and make, e.g., Legendary weapons, Ascended and so on forth. What am I doing wrong?

Love the little tune it plays too. Happy Wintersday to all that gets stomped.

Zephyrus.9680:

Only thief’s new heal is worse.

Groups of Venom Share thieves. Totally going to be the new meta. Mhm..

Last I heard, they wish to test the account-wide WXP in the EotM beta. I wouldn’t expect it to arrive before closer to Spring, 2014 in other words. I’d rather they work out any kinks, than to rush it out to us with bugs. I want my ranks on my now main Mesmer as well, but I can probably gain the ranks I need before this gets implemented. I can live even if I don’t got my beloved guard stacks.

Sanduskel.1850:

TheGuy.3568:

As has been said many times and will likely be said many times more. Thieves that hit that hard are glass. They aren’t speced to survive long and generally do not go the full 30 into SA as they cant pull off those numbers without massive stacks of bloodlust and other food buffs. 8k possible vs glass or an uplevled. 12 and 22k are not speced in SA or have defensive utilities (ie they use signets).

Brush up on the class before coming to major assumptions. Backstabbing someone in the front (ie you miss their back) only hits about 2k with your general 30 point SA build.

No…. my thief isn’t glass and routinely hits that hard. sorry, I respectfully disagree with you.

There’s pretty much no way you are hitting 12k+ Backstab reliably without being glass and through the use of your Assassin’s Signet. Unless you only target upscaled players. Sure, I’ve hit 20k Backstabs on upscaled players, when I’m full glass and after activating Assassin’s Signet.

If I fail, I got to bail though.

If I’m not glass, I hit more in the 4-6k range at best. That’s a good amount of damage of course, but still, my only beef with Thief, as it has been ever since I used to main it, is that Cloak and Dagger does insane damage for what it provides. Stealth. I don’t see why it should hit for upwards to 8k (when full glass) considering it’s a defensive skill.

As I quite honestly prefer the ability to min-max my stats within WvW, something you are just not able to do with sPvP due to how the stats are given from large pools through amulets and gemstones, I would hate for something like this to happen to WvW.

I like having the ability to go 2 Dire, 3 Carrion and 1 Knight for gear, 3 Celestial, 2 Berserker and 1 Assassin for trinkets, and so on forth. Now I don’t really go mixing my gear like the aforementioned example, but the ability to really control your stats is something I seriously miss whenever I do sPvP (and is why I am mainly a WvW-player). A lot of my more fun builds are plain impossible to do efficiently in sPvP, where as they are great for WvW.

WvW != sPvP. I prefer it how it is, and would rather see them make the ability to really customize your stats in sPvP happen. It would definitely open up for less cookie-cut builds in there. As long as everyone has access to the same stats, I don’t see how it would make it all that more unbalanced.

Yeah, getting the same in Europe. Can’t recall this Tax before. Probably their new payment system provider pocketing some extra money. It does say that the total is going to be €50 even though it lists a €10 Tax with it at the Confirm screen though. Oh well, doesn’t matter, I only receive a “failed” error message when trying to give ArenaNet some money. Why in the world they wanted to change to this new provider is beyond me, they must be losing money on it. I basically decided to not buy Gems after all because of this Tax showing up and the fact that it just “failed” three times in a row.

DevonCarver.5370:

Would the commander system be functional enough with more markers, guild only tags, less suppression, better supplyinfo, and possibly additional marker shapes?

I never felt a need for more markers, as nobody ever seems to really join the squad, and markers placed before they joined are not visible to them. That could be fixed I guess to make them a bit more useful (or perhaps it already has been fixed, haven’t checked in the longest time now).

But guild only tags, yes! Please look into making this happen. What guilds tends to do right now is to mark their “commander” (Ctrl+T), which takes away a rather important ability otherwise for trying to co-ordinate focus-kills in massive fights. If we lose track of our “commander”, that can be certain death. Having a guild only tag would really help change how smaller scale (20-25 or less) groups can fight the “blob” (50+).

I never ran into a suppression problem. I don’t spam the same commands over and over, I mix up my messages if any. A lot of servers runs community-TeamSpeak servers anyways, to co-ordinate through voice rather than text.

As for better /supplyinfo, another yes! Sorely needed. The radius is way too small to be efficient. If you just increased the range to about 3000 or so, that’d alleviate a lot of shortcomings with this command. Better yet, if it could work only for guildies in perhaps an even larger radius when used in combination with a guild only mode, that’d be like receiving a kiss from Dwayna.

More marker shapes I can’t say that I feel much need for myself. Same reasons as I listed above. I don’t really use markers as I find that it is a bit pointless when people don’t join the squad at any rate. And at least in the past (I’ll stand corrected if it’s been fixed), those that joined after they had been placed, would not see them.

Until she gets re-designed (Flamekissed), Vella Absconditus is sporting her new beloved set. And who knows, maybe she’ll continue to wear the re-designed one as well. Never know, it might look nice. If not, she’ll probably go back to Cultural.

I’m more of a WvW player, in guild raids, I don’t even really need to clear my own conditions as there’s plenty of cleansing going on, the little I need to self-cleanse is not really worth mentioning, and when roaming, I already feel that one healing skill with the combination of the traits is enough to keep most conditions off me. A majority of condition builds are centered around specific conditions as well, or overall few in total. With the combination of stealth to make it harder for enemies to give me conditions, I can’t say I struggle too much from what can otherwise be annoying on other professions.

I just find it to seem a bit too good if I am able to just click it once to remove those two conditions I tend to get on me at a time. I already don’t feel like I suffer from facing condition-heavier builds.

Then again, I guess not that many Mesmers tends to run Mantra of Recovery. I rarely see it used, and most people dismiss it as something that’s sub-par to Ether Feast, when it really isn’t far behind when traited.