Guild Wars 2

Of course you can play the game without them. The only “required” ones are easy to unlock and each takes roughly one event chain each in Verdant Brink and/or the other maps. That’s less than an hour of your time. For the Core game, there’s no real required ones, yet—there’s no way you got Fractal levels high enough for that to become a issue. And playing through Fractals will help you gain the ranks you need. Again, it’s easy enough to get through normal play. Also, you don’t HAVE TO do all of the Story right away. You were perfectly able to wait when you leveled up and went through the Personal Story. 11!0ne

There are several means of getting to Hero Points beyond easier access through a deep Mastery. Often you can ask for a Mesmer to Portal you as well. Or a Chronomancer to give you Alacrity on a specific one.

quaniesan.8497:

Phy.2913:

Stop trying to rush them.

It’s not rushing. You DO realize even early in the story they demand us to have rank 5 in certain mastery line, do you even know how long it is to get even 1 level?

Less than one event chain in Verdant Brink during daytime. That’s how long. There’s 5 different ones too. So go ahead and do each one, once, and you have a good chunk of your Mastery needed. Don’t forget that food buffs gives experience bonuses, so use food. Birthday Boosters can be a added boon to the experience gained. Once you’ve done those, uncover things on the map, explore a bit, or go to the next map, start doing various event chains there to see their individual mini-stories, uncover the map, explore and/or move on to the next map. It’s not a grind if you don’t make it one. Also, no, there’s no need to have rank four in Itzel Lore anymore, they patched that out:

Stephane Lo Presti

• Itzel Poison Lore is no longer a Mastery requirement for story.

That said, I have it, and I haven’t been grinding. I’ve done most events only once, except map meta ones, because I like them—meaning it’s definitely not a grind to do them again and again. I have a Mastery rank of 22 in total, 20 being from HoT maps and 2 of them Pact Commander rank one and Fractal Attunement rank one. Again, I did not grind repeatedly on something.

So you want to have every Mastery unlocked within a few days? I find it disgusting that ArenaNet is allowing people to exploit CoF/Arah paths to rush Masteries as-is I might add. There’s absolutely no meaning to seeing someone with high Mastery ranks now. Oh, you got Mastery Rank 70? Well, you just exploited for it, so woop-di-doo, very impressive. Not. Masteries are HORIZONTAL LEVELS. Instead of the a-typical VERTICAL LEVEL progression added in most other MMORPG expansions, which renders all your past efforts void, as new gear tiers and levels outshines your past investments (—Guild changes have rendered all my hundreds of Gold and three years time invested void granted, so they really annoy me with that, on what is otherwise nice additions to the system). Would you rather see that they took that route?

Anyways, it’s not a grind unless you make it a grind. You can go explore, you can gather, you can kill a few enemies here and there. You can do Story. You can do Hero Challenge(s) and/or help others with theirs, you can do various events, on various maps. Oh no, you actually need to play the game’s new content? Come on now, there’s no reason to rush these things. And again, I find it such a shame that people exploited a flaw in endless spawns. And a bigger shame that ArenaNet allows it.

Not going to wade through 64 pages of comments. But here’s my 2 cents on the subject;
Excellent implementation, ArenaNet!
_____________

I, for one, applaud that you incentivize team work, by interacting with other players for a large quantity of these Hero Challenges. I mean, this is an MMORPG. Why in the world would we not interact on some basic level with others? I’ve had no issues finding people to help by asking in /map, and have at this point 104 Hero Points beyond having fully unlocked my Chronomancer on Saturday. I still have 10 Hero Challenges that I have not completed in various Heart of Thorns maps, for another 100 Hero Points, meaning there’s a 204 Hero Point surplus (in my case, and for most pre-existing Lv.80 players) of them. If x Hero Point is too difficult and/or you can’t find it, move on, find another one. There’s more than enough to get yourself maxed out.

Why should the Elite Specialization be unlocked without any form of effort? If you play sPvP, this is not a issue regardless, you got full access as-is. For World vs. World, you can unlock Hero Points entirely through the game mode, using the Proofs of Heroics you get from ranking up (not a difficult task). It’s 4 days since release, and people want to have everything completed already? That would be a terrible expansion. This is not grindy. It’s not gated. It’s just basic progression. I was perfectly able to finish up with my Hero Point collecting on the second day, and that was easily done by interacting with others and/or tagging up to draw people to a Hero Challenge (a valid strategy if you have it available).

When compared to your average MMORPG expansion, at the very least ArenaNet took the road of horizontal progression, rather than vertical. All our past efforts (except Guild investments.. and I am really annoyed by this Anet—you threw several HUNDREDS of my Gold out the window by replacing, instead of expanding) is not voided due to the expansion being implemented. This is a good system. It gives you some reason to do these challenges with strangers and friends, beyond Map Completion (which is bugged if you have 100% Core completion, Anet, and don’t grant rewards—it does grant rewards if you don’t have 100% in the Core game though).

There is no GRIND here. At all. You do one Hero Challenge, move on to the next, etc.—you are not grinding away repeatedly on one batch of enemies, over and over. Don’t throw the word grinding out there if it does not freaking apply. Although this topic is not about it, that applies for Masteries too. You play the game, or you choose to grind. There’s a MASSIVE difference here. You can grind, but then you have no right to complain and say it is a grind. How you choose to play is up to you. You can do each event once or twice just fine and get high ranks of the Maguuma Mastery lines. Just remember to kill enemies here and there. Gather. Uncover the map. Again, kill enemies. You’ll be surprised how fast it fills if you kill some foes now and again.

TL;DR: Ask in /map if you want to complete a Hero Challenge. It’s a MMORPG, why wouldn’t you socialize at least on a minor level? Don’t get obsessed about completing a specific one, there’s a surplus to get your Elite Specialization fully unlocked. There’s four maps. It’s perfectly possible to use a Elite Specialization before you unlock every Trait and Utility Skill, but that said, you don’t have to use a Elite Specialization to play in the Heart of Thorns maps. But most importantly; It’s been FOUR DAYS since release. Not even a freaking week!

Jon Olson.8439:

If you haven’t done so already, try dropping various settings to their minimum levels. Things such as character limit, texture quality and such can lead to significant memory thrashing.

I get a substantial amount of game crashes since Heart of Thorns as well. It also stops responding quite often. With 8GB of GDDR5 VRAM and 16GB of DDR3 RAM, you wouldn’t think Guild Wars 2 could fill the memory that easily, unless there is a memory leak. For that matter, it’d be nice if the coded focus on the CPU could be offloaded to the GPU by now. The game could perform so much better if it didn’t get bottlenecked by it overly relying on the CPU, as opposed to the GPU.

Kravick.4906:

You do have to grind and grind and grind just to progress past several points of the story, however.

Not really, all I did was run through the maps, do a few events, killed some mobs, and I had the main Masteries required, Gliding and Shrooms (+3 more), as well as the majority of my Chronomancer traits. It’s not grindy, unless you play it as if it’s grindy.

You get Experience for practically everything in this game, not just doing events over and over. Go do some partial map completion (uncover the maps and get the things you can get with your current Masteries), gather, kill a few mobs now and again, do a few events, do Hero Point challenges and Adventures, explore and don’t be afraid of using your Elite Specialization without all traits. My Chronomancer worked perfectly fine from the very start. It’s likely your build that’s wrong, if you can’t deal with one “handicapped” trait line for a while. There’s more than enough content in this to let you “level up” without the necessity of repeating events. It’s also worth noting that Masteries are for PvE, so complaining about them as a non-PvE player is ridiculous. sPvP don’t need Hero Points. WvW players can earn all the Hero Points within WvW.

This is an expansion, it’s supposed to give us new content and things to do. Would you rather they increased the level cap, added a new tier of items and invalidated everything you’ve done for the past 3 years (except Legendary)? This is horizontal progression, which is far superior to some vertical progression seen in your average MMORPG. If you had everything right out the gates, you’d complain equally about how little there is to do and how this wasn’t worthy of being called an expansion.

Not likely to hop on to Revenant any time soon. I will level it to Lv.80, but there’s so many other things I wish to dabble with first, on my main, soon to be Chronomancer. When I do get around to leveling up the Revenant, I will take him/her through the Core content though, leveling him/her the good old fashioned way. I always found it better to learn how to play my characters, through leveling them in a regular fashion instead of through shortcuts.

I like Nevermore as a model overall, but I can’t really get myself to like the effect of the Spirit Raven. The projectile, footfalls, the sleeve, the way it looks on your back, the murder of “crows” flying above you—great—the slowly flapping Spirit Raven though.. not a fan, at all. It’s too big, obscures too much of the character, looks low-resolution/washed out, and it’s flat, that’s right, flat. When viewed from a straight on angle, it’s “invisible”, it’s thinner than paper. Not a fan, at all. If they’d work a bit more on that part of the Staff, I think it could be a very cool Legendary.

The other two, I like them, quite a bit too. Axe looks fantastic, and I only wish Chronomancer could wield an Axe (especially with that pendulum at the bottom), fitting a “time & space” theme. Pistol has at least decent looking electrical effects, compared to Bolt’s stretched, terrible looking electricity effects shooting off your body (I really wish they’d revisit that and clean it up a bit, it looks terrible), or the weird footprints of Meteorlogicus (thunder clouds on the ground, shooting lighting up into the air.. weird concept to me, could do with a revisit as well). Overall, a nice new trio of new Legendaries, but that raven seriously needs work still. It looks as bad as when it were datamined two years ago (—Sorry to whomever designed it, I just don’t like the execution, the concept is nice).

Everything but Elite Specializations to my knowledge. You should have access to Leagues, as such, to their rewards. You should have access to Stronghold. Maybe I’m wrong, so don’t quote me on that.

Josh Davis.6015:

As a note (and to address concerns), we won’t be adding dire stats or perplexity runes to sPvP. We’re vetting and discussing each and every rune/sigil/stat combo as a group before adding them in, with the main goal being improving build diversity.

Dearest Joshua, dearest Mr. Davis, dearest Grouch,

In what possible way would a normalized Dire set be problematic in sPvP? Admittedly, I personally wouldn’t use it, but I nonetheless find it semi-ridiculous that it’s not available in sPvP, to those that may want to use it there for whatever their reason might be. It’s not as if Dire is actually a very optimized stat combination. Its users can’t really trigger Critical effects, and all you end up relying on, are your conditions, which can be countered by cleansing and/or avoidance. Is it that much different from say using Soldier as a Power-bunker stat set? I can’t say I’ve ever been frustrated when fighting against someone using Dire in World vs. World—so I can’t see myself being frustrated in sPvP when you normalize its stats.

And, on the subject of Perplexity; What is so wrong with this Rune set? Well.. besides the one thing that’s wrong with it, per say. The “on struck” part of the fourth bonus. That is what needs revising. The game’s combat is heavily intertwined with avoidance, so why should any Rune reward you for playing (purposely) badly? This isn’t the only Rune that needs this revised either, the entire collection of Runes with an effect on being struck should be altered (unless it’s at least tied to something additional, such as a HP threshold)—Baelfire, Citadel, Fire, Flame Legion, Hoelbrak, Ogre, Pack, Privateer, Strength, Rata Sum, Earth (fourth bonus), Ice, Lich, Sanctuary (fourth bonus), Speed, Air, Golemancer, Rage, Grenth, Krait, Nightmare, Orr (fourth bonus), Perplexity, Dwayna, Flock, Grove, Monk, Water—the lot, all 28 of them, deserves to be altered to be less passive.

My suggestion? Make it trigger based on, e.g., a stacking effect with a timeout period, which increases on successfully performing a set “task”, e.g., a way of altering the Perplexity Rune’s fourth bonus could be to make it; “Gain an evasive charge for 15 seconds whenever you evade an attack. At 3 charges, inflict 1 stack of Confusion for 8 seconds. (Cooldown: 25 Seconds)” or at the very least tie in some more additional criteria, such as a health threshold. It’s not like it will necessarily be difficult to trigger granted, but at least it’s not straight up passive. You could also reduce the amount of Confusion stacks from 5 to 3 on the interrupts, for the sixth bonus.

While I’m at it, please, please advocate for adding some more interrupt-oriented Rune sets. And not just condition-based ones either. As a interrupt-loving individual, besides interrupts being largely useless in higher-end PvE thanks to Defiance, and it not being any better with the Breakbar, I find it sad that my only option to further enhance my interrupts, is the Perplexity set. Could we please have some more? Pretty please?

Doam.8305:

The other classes had there F skills thrown out the window and replaced or at the very least altered however the chrono is an addition without change.

In what way did the Druid F* skills get changed? How about Warrior when not activating the Berserk? The Scrapper sure changed up the F* skills, did it not? The Daredevil changed theirs right? Tempest, those surely changed the Attunements beyond giving them additional effects through Overload which can be activated 5 seconds after swapping, oh.. wait. Herald totally changes up the Revenant, am I right?—it’s not as if you mainly just gain access to Glint.

Yeah.. Reaper and Dragonhunter changes stuff the most, and it’s not massive differences. Dragonhunter Virtues are basically the same as Guardian with their Passives, though arguably better on their Active abilities. Yes, we get a new shatter. Other elite specializations gets new things too with their profession mechanics.

Don’t underestimate the damage you can do in Moa form, keep pressuring the Mesmer. You can also Flee with the #5 skill, which will Evade as you dart off. Rather effective if you use it right. Since you added a little comment on how only bad Mesmers can’t kill x or y, I’ll say to you that only bad players can’t deal with Moa and gets upset about it. There’s a wiki, you could look up the skills available to you.

By all means, pick up a Mesmer and play one. See how easy it is. Clearly you can faceroll with this profession, so join us — we’re seemingly the flavor of the month, every month. We must be with how often players ask for nerfs in regards to Mesmer skills.

Unlock Chronomancer, however long that may take. Uncertain if it’s as easy as just clicking stuff with our existing points, or if we need to go somewhere and train (call it a Quest if you like), so to speak.

NICENIKESHOE.7128:

Functionally 3 pulls does give you a small advantage against opponents who’s currently available stun break has no movement in it, since it is harder for them to move out of gravity well right after when they’re pulled to the centre.

A dodge pretty much takes you straight out of it, even at its center. I don’t see how it is functionally easier per say. Where you position the Well is somewhat down to player skill, you can put them (nearly) dead center on your own, not relying on a Pull. E.g., you can Immobilize prior to using it, Stun, etc.—I already do that with Chaos Storm, why not with a Well?

Shadowstep.6049:

— and hopefully more frequent balance patches.

They already wrote it’s going to be a balance patch after every League season (7 weeks), “As such, prior to each season, there will be a balance update.”, at which point they allow a period for the meta to settle, “League play will generally begin about two weeks after a balance update to ensure that the metagame has stabilized in an appropriate manner.”—so expect to wait roughly two months between each, which is relatively frequent overall. I wonder if they will hotfix glaring “exploits” and/or problematic balance discoveries or not though, if it’s mid-season, or if they’ll allow it to exist as it has established itself in a meta for that period. The part about “Balance will be closely monitored throughout the season with the goal of having solid balance going into the postseason tournaments.” doesn’t really say that, beyond that they will monitor it.

I find it to be little to no difference when it comes to functionality. It’s 3 x CC in either case, which ends on a Pull. In what possible way was it more useful with 3 x Pull? I does pretty much the same exact thing, only through different animations.

Well, ok, if we’re going to be overly analytical about it, the Engineer Trait, Stabilized Armor, sort of “benefits” from it having a Knockdown in there, which shouldn’t be triggered on a Pull (if I recall correctly), but then again, it should also “help” Warriors in your midst, should they run with Merciless Hammer. It’s basically negligible things to take into account though, if you ask me.

I much prefer the Float being a part of it, making it look all that more like a gravity oriented Well. I admit that I do wish it could be Pull > Float > Knockdown though, but R.Gee explained it was done in the order it was done, due to it looking better when considering animations. I guess it’s good that it ends on a Pull too, even though it has little to no effect if the player wishes to dodge out of it, and you haven’t taken measures to prevent that (e.g, Immobilize/Stun). If you want to (increase the odds that you can) secure the final damage burst, add another CC with Utility-/Weapon Skills and use it at the end of the cycle. Also, the damage is not terrible for burst, but I agree that it won’t compare to Quickness in terms of damage output. It will have some play with the All’s Well that Ends Well Trait though, so it may be useful to bring it for that purpose in PvE, and rather rely on faster recharges over time than Quickness, which we can also do with Well of Action for that matter. Additionally, as a lockdown oriented player, I appreciate that it brings more CC to my tool set, as this is yet another option for interrupts and “frustration”, which can be a powerful condition on its own, even if it’s not something specified in-game, heh.

PS: I loathe the design around the Breakbar and Defiance. I really wish ArenaNet would take a step back and consider how it renders a part of the way we play, practically useless. Yes, we are encouraged to bring crowd control now, great, but we can’t trigger our traits (or Runes, of which only Perplexity exists right now — more please, Anet).. which is a huge oversight. I do understand we can’t be allowed to just interrupt everything, that would render encounters trivial. But there could be certain (unique) attacks that is always possible to interrupt, incorporated into every foe of the game, on a reasonable recurring frequency, or a short window of time where you can get a few interrupts in, after say removing the Breakbar or through other means. It’s not impossible to resolve this annoyance and make it at least a bit more entertaining to consider bringing a interrupt-oriented player along, who actually gains and distributes effects on interrupting the foe/boss.

Keep in mind that Wells aren’t required. They are a part of our extended tools set, which can be incorporated into a build, should we so choose. It’s optional.

One place Wells can be of use, is through on-point denial. The same way a Chaos Storm can convince your enemies to move off-point for a short while, Wells is going to have this same effect. This can be effective when trying to de- and/or cap.

It is likely going to be more useful when you run with a zerg in World vs. World as well, giving us far more AoE possibilities than we can currently output, given the way our illusions are paper and explode before they can do anything at all, within a clash. With Wells, we can shift some focus away from largely harassing the side lines, with some engagement on the enemy cluster, to it becoming a larger split of focusing our damage and support within the clashes themselves (—still maintaining our role as side line harassers, using our illusions there).

In PvE; Chill on enemies + Alacrity to you and allies (both with Well of Recall and the All’s Well that Ends Well Trait), Slow to enemies + Quickness to you and allies, Blur to you and allies, Condition Removal + Heal to you and allies, and so on forth. There’s use for them in PvE too. Should you choose to want to do so.

Wells aside; The Shield in its current BW3 form will allow for Mesmers to more easily run with the allied zerg (or the melees if you like), through the enemy clashes, while at the same time providing support through on-block Blind (+ Confusion) from using our Ineptitude Trait, and/or even spreading out some Burning, should you opt to use the Superior Guardian Runes set. There’s Traits that is absolutely amazing for pretty much any facet of Mesmer gameplay within the Chronomancer too. Be that giving illusions Superspeed when shattering, Alacrity to yourself for faster recharges, a clone back on shattering two illusions, Quickness on shattering or Phantasms back on their first shatter. All of which benefits shatter builds, Phantasm builds, or even condition builds. It’s also giving us options for adding further effects to our interrupts, through the application of Slow, and with that again having synergy with the trait that increases our Critical Chance by 30% on slowed enemies, it can be rather “easy” to reach (short) periods of time with 100% Critical Chance, for some great burst potential (more applicable to PvP, since Anet is terrible at making interrupt-oriented traits usable in actual “boss” fights—fix this, Anet, seriously! E.g., make some attacks possible to interrupt in every encounter within the game, which occurs relatively frequent. It’s a big part of our Trait options and Skills—not to mention our GW heritage—it’s rather sad how the Breakbar and Defiance renders it useless).

Chronomancer is more than Wells. If you don’t want to use them, by all means, you can use Chronomancer for the Traits and ignore the Utility Skills. You don’t need to use the Shield if you don’t want it either, although it’s freaking amazing as it was refined in BW3. R.Gee, the hero we need.
________________

PS: kitten nal is not a bad word. I am a bit tired of the kitten filter at this point. Add in exceptions already, it’s not that difficult. It’s basically getting a tad bit ridiculous these days. Can’t even write kitten (fourty-five seconds)..

Note that there is no 72 hour restrictions on buying Gems normally, from within the game. This is rather on the Heart of Thorns bonuses, which was said to be due to them having some large quantity of fraudulent charges, I think.

Same issue tonight, though only in World vs. World (EU, T1—all maps). There were other players complaining about the same issue, various countries. It seems that PvE (at least Lion’s Arch) is fine for me however. This was not your typical run-of-the-mill skill lag from zergs clashing, this was straight up server lag of some sort, spreading across all WvW Borderlands and Eternal Battlegrounds.

Country: Norway
ISP: NextGenTel
Server: Seafarer’s Rest

Why would it matter if a person has switched professions? Also, it’s not uncommon that people will play with alts for some variety, and/or to get all that much better at countering said profession.

As far as I saw in one short streams I was looking at, he seemed very into Chronomancer and were looking at his video footage from playing with it in BW3. Afterwards I believe he played some Thief in sPvP. Perhaps he simply plays something else while he waits for Heart of Thorns? And again, why in the world would it matter if he wanted to swap to a different profession? Why start a topic on the subject?

I’m more frustrated by the inability to Blink on to certain terrain, such as a bridge in WvW, or a set of stairs on the tower walls (or for that matter, up on to the wall from the inside/outside in certain cases if the gate is broken). It’s inconsistent in a sense, telling you there’s no path to target.

I do understand that they’ve simply taken a lazy approach to avoid us teleporting up from the outside of structures, but yeah, that is just lazy if you ask me, and warrants a fix. And yes, there are also terrain with slight bumps that will cause a failure, because there’s technically no “path” up on it. Another problematic issue post-change to the behavior of teleportation skills.

That said, teleportation is powerful, and I don’t have too much grounds for complaints. There’s just a few “quality of life” improvements I’d like to see incorporated, to make them a slight bit more consistent.

Projectseph.2670:

Absconditus.6804:

3.) Again, same as above, standard models. Also, Phantasms are see-through, making it incredibly easy to spot the opaque Sylvari. It should not confuse anyone.

Mind games comes from the illusions and shatters, interrupts and control in general, (stealth if you want to use that), positioning and so on forth. A new player may also be increasingly confused by the illusions regardless, especially when paired with stealth. A more experienced player will pick you out faster than you can count to 1 however, when you pop out of stealth.

I must direct you to:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Sylvari-Phantasm/first#post2498742

Again, I can only speculate as I am still installing the game and thus, gathering info through google.
But, that (pic in the above post) looks pretty confusing to me. Especially in the heat of battle. I doubt even a veteran would immediately pick it out.

Oh, it’s not the first time this one has been brought up. For one, the static nature of an image, angle, graphical settings and distance in the one screenshot shown, makes it unrepresentative of how it would actually be as an effective “distraction” in-game. Still, you can tell the Phantasms are transparent, compared to the player model, the weapons also gives it away. You, also have Boons which your clones will not have, making you easy to spot by targeting. Anything that pops out of stealth last, is likely to be the Mesmer, again, a quick tell on who you are, should you be using stealth. You will move different to your clones. Your clones will be paper in terms of how much damage they take compared to you. Your clones will never dodge. Your Phantasms have their own weapons, although you can of course purchase and wield the same skins. And again, players can use standard models and team colors (sPvP).

It’d be neat if we could actually deceive anyone with our clones. It’s what I was thinking about too, when I first read about our GW2 version, and I were also somewhat excited by the notion of being able to trick my opponents using my illusions. However — sadly, only new players will be confused, and that’s regardless of your character getup. To a new player, the four targets may be overwhelming, until they realize all the things mentioned above to easily pick out a Mesmer, and then more so when they got an eye for all of them at once. Anyone with experience, is very unlikely going to get confused by that passive kind of deception. Sad truth.

I didn’t find it overpowered to fight against, nor underwhelming to play. It felt good with how it were tuned in Beta Weekend 3. I do expect some minor tweaks however, on the nerfing side (sadly), people are quick to jump on the “nerf this, nerf that” choo-choo train, and the general feedback is that we are OP. Then again, so is Mesmer. Has been said to be OP since Guild Wars for that matter.

Never mind that it takes some rather skilled individuals to actually make Chronomancer shine. Who cares about that. It’s OP. This really skilled player, made this thing seem easy. OP. Nerf it. I don’t care if I can’t do the same. A few people can. OP! OP! Furry kittens and fluffy sheep OP!

1.) No, players can for one set other models to be standard ones, so basically the same Human model across all opponents. And you can zoom out the camera substantially enough for this to not be a issue when fighting against a Charr/Norn at any rate.

2.) Again, same as above, standard models is an option. Also, this should not be a issue once you are used to reading animations across the various races. I’ve never had an issue fighting against someone because of their selected race.

3.) Again, same as above, standard models. Also, Phantasms are see-through, making it incredibly easy to spot the opaque Sylvari. It should not confuse anyone.

Mind games comes from the illusions and shatters, interrupts and control in general, (stealth if you want to use that), positioning and so on forth. A new player may also be increasingly confused by the illusions regardless, especially when paired with stealth. A more experienced player will pick you out faster than you can count to 1 however, when you pop out of stealth.

Here’s a little formula;

The profession is somewhat difficult to grasp/master. Those who sticks with it, in turn, becomes somewhat skilled, by having to overcome the several challenges presented, as they level a highly Trait dependent profession with a quirky mechanic in its illusions and shatters. This in turn creates a skewed image on how the Mesmer is overpowered, because every Mesmer you fight, is actually somewhat skilled, making it seem that way. In addition, as a new(er) player, illusions can be confusing and you may lose track of the Mesmer. This makes it a great profession, for the already somewhat skilled players that sticks with it, to confuse and get an upper hand/prey on these newcomers. Instead of trying to play the profession, learning how it works, finding out the various flaws we know all to well about, they rather complain in droves, and ask for nerfs. ArenaNet is forced to look into it, and strikes the bat down on our shoulders, yet again, to please the majority. Fair enough.

PS: Luckily with R.Gee at the helm, we seem to be getting fair treatment, and nothing as of late has felt like harsh nerfs to me. On the contrary, I feel some of the recent changes has been the best we’ve had throughout the years.

I would just like to know what MrSilver considers so overpowered with the profession within sPvP and WvW. In what way is it overpowered? In the way that it is a profession that will pound you in the face over and over as you level it, until you get your grasp around its mechanics, incidentally shaping you into a relatively skilled player (meaning most Mesmer players you face, are actually relatively skilled)? That it is a profession often confusing to fight against, for a new(er) player?

I mean, I guess I do understand where he’s coming from, as it must be overpowered if you can’t counter, e.g., a shatter, by kiting a mild distance away while you’re fighting, then as soon as you hear the distinct shatter sound cue, and/or see the illusions run towards you in synergy with one another (not forgetting the big burst of sparkly effects shooting off the Mesmer), either through timing and dodging towards them, or simply kiting in the opposite direction, avoid all the hurt which that would bring your way. Or how Stability makes interrupts a fair bit more harder to pull off. How the Mesmer has no real chase opportunity, and you can “win” by simply ignoring them and running where ever you were planning to go (in WvW at least). That must be it, the incredibly easy time you should have escaping/ignoring most Mesmers. Overpowered in a nutshell.

Give me a break. We’re not overpowered. We’re not weak either. We’re in an alright spot. Anyways, Mesmer’s aren’t overpowered. Play as one of us and fight someone with some relative skill in their bones, and you’ll see that it takes a bit of effort to be a decent Mesmer. It’s not as if we faceroll our keyboards.

Hush, Substance E, hush! Do not say such rational words!

Recommended is fair enough. It drops Legendary armor of the Ascended tier. Once you got that, you are pretty much set. A set of armor that can swap stats at will. Now they just need to make a system that lets you collect and unlock (e.g., buy and slot) Runes/Sigils for individual Legendary items, so that you can actually swap these things too. It’s not that hard to make Ascended sets mind you. I’ve made three different ones for my Mesmer. Didn’t take forever, and if I wanted other stats combinations, I would have had plenty more by now.

A few streams of the Raid test showed people playing highly inefficient too, having high DPS melee players move to the “field” in order to avoid the AoE that wipes pretty much everyone, instead of ranged alternatives. People not dodging the teleports. Starting a phase in the wrong spot. There were several things that could be optimized. There were a distinct lack of Quickness and Alacrity in some of these raids too, two things that can really improve on damage over time—when combined. Most people were slow on the Breakbar as well, at the very least on one of the splits.

I am fairly certain a good group in Exotics can overcome the raids. Ascended is better, but not vastly so. Yes, you can min-max through +5 Stats Infusions (and I have, Versatile (Omni) ones for my Defensive slots included), and sure, it does make a difference. But I doubt it will be required. Unless they put Agony in there.

Perhaps they want to keep it hush to try avoid floodgates. Though it kinda stinks needing to sit and wait an entire day if it’s not announced. And I will.. I want to play Chronomancer, and start advancing Masteries, and do Adventures, and look at new skins and combinations I can do with those, and Guild Halls, and new WvW map, and sPvP Leagues, and Fractals to 100, and well, not right away, but preparing for Raids, and.. sensory overload of things to do.. help, can it be October 23rd now?

Nearly every Elite Specialization gets a new F* utility, without sacrificing the old, so why should ours be merged into/replace an existing one? On the subject of the UI, yes, that can do with a bit of a makeover perhaps, but I don’t mind how it looks as-is. There’s bigger issues with how our numerous in-game buffs will go in a conga line all the way to the right side of the screen, disappearing under the mini-map—if you got enough of them—when talking about the aesthetics of the UI that is. That affects every player, regardless of their profession (unless you run the game at 4K, I guess, never tried that).

The balance to our Continuum Shift, is its destructibility, you can counter it by targeting the Continuum Rift placed in the world. Players are not used to spotting it, nor to take it out, yet. This will come with time. Our counter to this again, is to make use of clever placement, lockdown and so on forth (all with their own counters). We got a rather short period of time to make use of it however, so we can’t exactly drop it around a corner, run for a few seconds and then do our skills. By its very design, it’ll often be placed in sight for the enemy to focus. If they don’t deal with it, that’s not our fault, is it?

I don’t see any reason as to why we need to sacrifice more than one of our Trait lines. Taking Chronomancer over our other preexisting lines, comes with certain sacrifices. Let’s not pretend it doesn’t. While our new line gives something for everyone, it also is taking the place of something else. And with us being a profession incredibly reliant on our Traits, more so than most other professions, it’s not without sacrifice that you pick up Chronomancer.

I think people tend to forget that Mesmer, is a relatively difficult profession to get into. A difficult profession to master. Most players acknowledge this. It’s a profession that require some skill to play. In turn, this means that the average Mesmer you will be facing, is inherently a relatively skilled player, maybe more so than your average player of another profession. When every Mesmer you face, is inherently relatively skilled, this can create a skewed perception of the professions “power” to someone playing a different profession. Thus, we face the “QQ”, complaints and nerf requests at a steady rate.

Yes, I will assume that most of us feel, care for something and/or someone. So yes, Mesmer players do feel.

As for us being in a bad state, what in the world are you on about? If anything, we’re in a greater state than we ever were. Arcane Thievery now transfers Blind. Chaotic Dampening recharges Staff skills that tiny bit faster. At least Duelist’s Discipline works now, even if it at the same time was balanced. Harmonious Mantras damage buff lasts 2 more seconds. Phantasmal Disenchanter attacks rather quickly now too. PU works while downed, and sure, stealth duration is reduced slightly, but it still adds another second to basically all our stealth abilities. Ok, fair enough, I guess if you overly relied on Stealth, I can see this being a issue, I never use stealth, so I don’t notice this change at all—we’re not weak because of it. Signet of Ether now finally heals without clones too! Temporal Curtain change is HUGE, and it finally makes Focus feel useful in group scenarios such as World vs. World, where you can actually contribute to more Swiftness than say a single Symbol of Swiftness will do. Awesome! And our Sword auto-attacks has received a 10% damage increase on each swing (last one without Boons, but it’s still helpful to our damage, if you use Sword that is).

With Chronomancer on the horizon, basically Mesmer 2.0, we find ourselves in one of the better states we’ve been in a very long time. Only 19 more days (and however long it takes to unlock).

Did we forget that Mesmer has been consistently decent at 1v1, prior to anything that Chronomancer gives us? The game is not balanced around 1v1..

Anyways, want to deny some Alacrity generation for the Chronomancer? Well, you got Chill to semi-counter it for a while, so that’s one way to potentially balance it out of the picture for a bit. Some professions are more proficient at this than others, e.g., they’ll be our hard counters. Or, kill off the clones, again, some professions are better at than others when it comes to AoE-melting our illusions. Pulling/pushing us off our Well before it can do its final pulse is another tactic to use, or to area denial the location it’s dropped at, the same way anyone mildly decent will try to get a Thief out of their Shadow Refuge and punish them as they get Revealed.

Alacrity is nice, sure, but let’s be fair, it’s not why we are winning in any 1v1 scenarios. Mesmer was never bad at 1v1. The people who complain, are the ones with less experience in PvP, the not-so-good (yet) players. Everyone needs to learn. The same players that still gets confused about who is the real Mesmer amidst the clones, still trying to pick them out, as they’re downed on the floor.

For Alacrity to be truly useful, you need to build into it. If you do that, you are forfeiting other strong choices. And even so, there’s counters to its generation.

Chill balances out Alacrity in PvP, to a degree. Pun aside, Ranger, Elementalist, Necromancer, Thief, Engineer and Guardian got relatively reliable access to it, then there’s Sigils and Runes. Mesmer even has some RNG form of its application with Chaos Storm and Chaotic Interruption.

Evapor.6849:

You do realize the entire raid wing will be released in under 3 weeks time, this is what they present us, this is the feedback that is being given, now that the event isn’t even playable i’m not sure why anyone would have anything positive to say, they chose to present this encounter specifically as the introduction to raids, jumping to conclusions and first impressions is not the same thing, they just happen to be both negative in this case.

You do realize that is not entirely correct? They said that the Raids in Guild Wars 2 wouldn’t be out at the launch of Heart of Thorns, but rather staggered post release to allow players to work on Mastery progression first. I believe the word was that raiding would be delayed by a week? That would make it about a month from now, to get our first little taste of the raids. Additionally, the The Final Beta Weekend Event Begins October 2! article states “Here you’ll be able to take on [ the first encounter of our first raid wing ] as you search for the missing soldiers. This is [ the first of four ] total encounters in Spirit Vale—we’ll save the other three for when we activate the first wing in the live game so we don’t give away too many surprises.” People could have paid a slight bit of attention before complaining too much. We have no idea how the other encounters will be. Chances are the first one(s), are going to be easier, before it starts to get challenging. A-typical raid design in practically every MMO there is.

You should probably do a tweet about it as well. It’s a quick way for people who use Twitter to see that it’s currently down. And of course, it’d be nice with a update saying when it’s back too.

Krispera.5087:

tetrodoxin.2134:

I’m jealous because everyone’s getting (way) more skills than the chrono :c

But, hey, we got F5 ! /s

I’m really happy for the Ranger/Druid thought.

Druid got F5 too! And I freaking loathe the Druid announcement. I see no reason to bring anything but Druids.

Keep in mind that most of the healing skills were dealing damage at the same time. To me, this is the worst thing that could happen to Guild Wars 2. I see no reason to bring anything but Druids. Why do we honestly need anything else? From what I heard, this sounds like a mandatory profession to bring to x game mode. I highly dislike that there is one profession that is a must, meaning it takes up a spot that otherwise another profession could fill. I am annoyed at this announcement, and how they have allowed this profession specialization to be designed. It has seemingly no drawbacks.

You can only purchase Heart of Thorns now, at least through the official Shop, which includes the core game. It should unlock the core game experience instantly, and Heart of Thorns as it releases on October 23rd.

Doggie.3184:

No cat ears?

Thanks for the giggle. Doggie asking for cat ears, priceless.

Devata.6589:

Only the future will tell us.

Well, the very recent past already did, heh. It’s to “make room” for new items. Because a e-store clearly runs out of room to stock their goods. It’s not as if it’s virtual or anything. I think the Gem Store is fair enough as it exists btw., and I’ve never really felt it was Pay 2 Win, even with the boosters. I just dislike when they take items out to create some artificial supply and demand.

Evon Gnashblade

The cubs are entering their fahrars, the days are growing shorter, and the weather grows colder. Summer is over, and with its end, we begin our transition into our winter lineup of items. This week marks your last chance to pick up our summer items before we make room for all-new goods.

Source: https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/seasonal-transition-in-the-gem-store/
_____________

Evon Gnashblade

Finishers
It’s time to retire our nonseasonal finisher sales from the Upgrades section of the Gem Store. The entire current line of finishers will be removed from Upgrades after this week, so this is your last chance to purchase them directly using gems.

Is interesting though.. and it almost sounds like they will be possible to earn in-game going forwards. —"this is your last chance to purchase them directly using gems." It could be something they aim to put into the sPvP Leagues and their rewards, e.g., a choice of a finisher for reaching x milestone. Makes some mild sense, I guess. And if so, I take back the greedy Anet comments. That’d be rather awesome, even if I’ve bought them all.

Behellagh.1468:

What do you suggest then as a means to stimulate actual cash purchases from the Gem Shop? That don’t involve paying for power or advantage or locking normal content? The two existing mechanisms they have is artificial scarcity, pulling items and returning them for a limited time; and sales that drain excess gold and gems from player inventories so cash purchased gems is all that’s left for them.

You can only depend on whales for so long before they have everything at which time they cease being your sugar daddy. You need to get normal players to spend cash on gems. Keeping an item in the Gem Shop means a player could save up enough gold to buy it. That doesn’t pay ANet’s bills.

As for finishers, I believe that there is an elite specialization that uses one in normal PvE content, implying that some critters may get recovery and heals from their kind. Seems like a perfect opportunity to rerelease these during HoT.

The Daredevil “finisher” attack didn’t use a finisher in PvE. It was simply a strong attack. If anything, they could make more PvE foes finishable, like the Toxic ones. I wouldn’t hate that personally, though I guess some might, as it’s one more step to kill something. And I use the Llama Finisher from time to time. I just change it often, as I own them all. It’s what I collect now. Well, unless Anet wants to ruin that by making one impossible to obtain for me that is.

The problem Anet has, is that when they seemingly have good means of earning steady money, they loosen the bowels and lets a big fat cow pie land on their legs. Miniatures, great means of steady income. But no, first they ruin it for a whole lot of people by putting some inside RNG boxes for Wintersday 2012, a whole lot of collectors stopped collecting at that point, since their collections were broken. Then they give away Mini Mr. Sparkles during a few games conventions, ruining further collections, this is where they lost me as a collector. Sure, several months later they made it so that you would get him if you had spent 4000 Gems in the store over the course of December, but that was way too late. People, myself included, had already skipped on a few packs by then. Then they start giving away a Mini Llama randomly at Twitch streams and to a few streamers here and there, ruining further collections. Some people think they were so immensely common, but no, they weren’t, not really. They, purposely ruined a market for themselves. A market that would have continued to be a steady income from “whales”. The only thing they had to do to resolve this, was to make them unbound. Up for trade. Nobody’s collection would ever be impossible to complete.

What they should do though, is organize their store properly. It’s a jumbled mess. There is no proper categorization, no proper sub-filters. Why is there only Style, and not further categorization for Outfits, Skins – Full, Head, Shoulder, Hands, Backpiece, Weapons – Staff, Sword, Mace, Shield, etc.? Miniatures are categorized as Toys. Sure, though as I explained, they’ve shot themselves in the foot with those regardless, but nevertheless they could be put into their own category. And if they want to create a demand, put up sales. Sales drives Gems to Gold up from Gold to Gems conversions, which in turn makes people buy Gems to get Gold. Fair enough, it is basically just shifting hands from several individuals to one “whale” willing to spend real money, while some trickle out of the market. It’s likely to be largely Gems to Gold conversions that is the brunt of their income, not actual individual purchases of items. Just look at the conversion and watch it jump back and forth. During a sale, you’ll see the cost for Gold drop immensely as people are converting Gold to Gems to afford items that’s on offer for a reduced price. And again, this in turn will quickly be offset by people converting Gems to Gold.

They need, frequent sales, just like Steam (do a Daily item on offer once the library is big enough, and a few Weekly offers with “slightly worse” deals). That alone is likely to shift Gold from those who won’t buy Gems, to those who do, with some leakage into oblivion. It will also bring some (likely a lot) people in daily, to check what is on sale today, or this week, and so on forth. In turn, tempting them to buy something else.

I will assume it’s a re-run of the previous Halloween. Basically something for those who do not buy HoT to do, as well as us who has purchased HoT I guess, although it’s likely just a re-run of sorts, so how interested are we? New LA though, true enough. They can’t skip on the yearly Halloween event, just because they are bringing out an expansion, that’d be a travesty.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

People keep saying that the only reason to remove stuff is to sell more of them. Me? I prefer them to throw out the old and introduce new stuff. The longer stuff stays in the shop, the more we take it for granted and the less special it feels. I prefer they only bring it back for anniversary/nostalgia sales.

The same way they’ve brought back the oft-requested Bunny Ears, right? They sure have a track record of bringing things back that people request. And it is in-game as a skin now for those who owned it for that matter, so there’s no reason why it shouldn’t have been made available to those that wanted it. I’d rather they stop this annoying removal of items, stripping down the goods on offer. I highly doubt there is a limitation of shelving that’s behind their removal here, it’s an e-shop, it by its very nature has endless shelving.. “before we make room for all-new goods”, right! It’s not as if it’s confusing to have a lot of items on offer, though if anything, they should make some effort towards doing a better job sorting it into sub-categories, such as Outfits, Skins, and even then, into Head, Shoulder, Hands, etc., as a sub-filter for Skins again, and so on forth. If something isn’t selling well, it’s because it were a poorly made product. Or, it’s saturated, such as the various unlimited gathering tools, if you have one of each, why would you want to buy more—removing and putting them back in is not going to change that. It’s nice to have various styles available, but don’t expect people to buy more than one of each, perhaps two, if they want to style a specific character.

ArenaNet simply turned greedy over the years. That much is fairly obvious to me. The is the sole purpose of the removal, is greed. To create a false sense of urgency, because it’s going “out of stock”. To create a false sense of supply and demand, on something that is inherently unlimited in stock, it’s digital. “before we make room for all-new goods”, don’t make me laugh. I miss the old ArenaNet, who weren’t seemingly all about money, but very much about their players too. I don’t honestly get that feeling from them anymore. Especially after that horrible event they threw together recently. I get it, ArenaNet is a business, they both need and want money. They’re not our friends. But they’ve done some exceptionally stupid things over the past 3 years that’s made me spend less money in their store, and that really irks me the wrong way. They are trying to make up for a lack of sales, after ruining their own potential for revenue in the past. One example, making it near-impossible to collect Miniatures if you want to be a completionist about it, freaking Mini Mr. Sparkles.. And once upon a time they used to be our friends. With Guild Wars they were absolutely in touch with their community. Nowadays, it feels as if that connection is borderline lost. There’s a few great profession representatives though.

Ross Biddle.2367:

Absconditus.6804:

I play with the zerg from time to time, but I won’t slot Veil for nobody. Veil is as pointless as trying to run backwards into the midst of the zerg fray, on a squishy build, without equipping weapons. Blindfolded.

Nobody is fooled by it. Nobody is caught off guard because of it. Fields are still thrown down exactly where you are moving so stealthily towards your foes. It’s easy to predict movement when you can see half the tail before they pass through the field. The mid- to the back of the tail is going to be targets of ranged skills regardless, so it only protected the precious Commander and his up-close posse from direct attacks, for mere moments. Veil, is overrated. It doesn’t last long enough to be of impact. It is a tool for fool Commanders to shout about.

I do my job. I don’t die. I remove Boons and lock down our enemies while dealing damage. Enemies who goes down in the blink of an eye once they can’t move anywhere. Does my team notice? Probably not. Nobody likely notices the lockdown in their midst. But I provide support far more valuable than some ineffective short attempt of a stealth-engagement. I don’t die. I do my job. I resurrect our downed allies, while I lock down, dealing damage. We just wiped teams twice our size. We had no Veil. The Commander still cries for it. A fool, crying after an unnecessary tool.

While I don’t care if you run veil or not, a good guild raid group will move as one so that there is no “tail”. Also, good use of a veil involves misdirection, a fake push if you will, that will bait out enemy aoe’s and CC’s. If you’ve ever been a part of a GvG you’d know how important a veil (or two) is upon the opening of an engagement and how it effects the flow of a fight from the outset.

When coordinated groups use those sorts of advanced tactics on an unorganized blob, it makes all the difference in the world.

But anyway, since it sounds like you’re just another random within the cluster of randoms, there’s not really any expectation for either you, or your commander to use veil to its potential. Saying its not possible though, or done on a daily basis, that’s just wrong.

P.s. I hate slotting veil too

A good guild group or not, there will always be a tail. There is no argument about it, there is always a tail, some larger than others (when unorganized). There is no single group of players that are capable of running perfectly together, we’re not machines, we’re human. All it takes is one slowpoke. Due to this, you will with some mental gymnastics be able to predict very nicely where a group of players are likely going to move, or not move, through “fake pushing” if you will, a tactic that hardly worked in 2012, nor does it really work in 2015, well, against anyone with baseline knowledge of such tactics that is. It’s as such, not what I’d call advanced tactics. Not when it’s something that’s been done for over 2 years solid. You can spot it a mile away after having done it for over 4000 hours. When I say you, I mean you, you, as-in Ross, you can spot that fake push a mile away. I know you can, you’ve been here long enough to stick out as not being a “scrub”. Each team’s goal is to approach the other team, usually sooner than later, so a quick “advanced tactical” counter is to run towards them as per usual, then backpedal in the angle that gives the best distance from its location, as soon as you see the Veil being dropped. They’ll appear a few seconds later, and it doesn’t matter what their planned tactic using Veil were. They better come up with a new one on the fly as you rush them.

I have never had much interest in GvG, not as it exists in Guild Wars 2, that is true. But I’ve been a part of my fair share during these 3 years, and nothing is more ridiculous than watching two groups of 20 or so players knowingly clash together in open space, trying to use Veil as some sort of desperate attempt to use “advanced tactics”. Do you know what won that fight? Not Veil, it was the harassers picking off the right people, the train of the clash smartly using their offensive and defensive skills, at the right time. Throw down more than one Veil and you make it all the more easier to spot what you’re doing for that matter. Both sides tends to use Veil and the same bait tactics, yet remarkably one side wins. I wonder what caused the victory, must be Veil.

When an organized group clashes with an unorganized group and utterly destroys it, Veil had barely anything to do with it, it was rather the organized manner of which they play together, Veil aside. They know how to function like a well oiled machine, in combat. They know how to properly cover each one another with water fields when healing, fire fields when stacking Might, to not overlap vital fields, Stability through the right group compositions, Protection application, Aegis, how to do pit stop quick-revive on their downed allies (or bannering and the likes), and how to survive individually, etc.

These days I am indeed a random in the randoms (or often I tag alongside guild groups that aren’t so full of themselves that they think everyone is a rally bot). I mainly roam if I’m not doing sPvP to satiate my PvP hunger, as zerging for the most part bores me. Besides the past couple days when my server (SFR) has been seemingly more focused on getting fun outnumbered fights than on taking structures, but that’s besides the point. I don’t even play as much as I used to, while awaiting HoT. But I’ve spent well over 4000 hours in an organized setting. They too asked for Veil, but eventually realized it wasn’t Veil that made a difference, but rather how we played together while we were visible.

I’m fine with people still thinking Veil is some necessity. Maybe they’re inexperienced (I would rather think they are “brainwashed” by the peer pressure to use the skill), but I’m certain they’ll notice it as not being as great as some seem to like making it out to be, eventually—and to put a bit more faith in their team’s capabilities beyond a gimmick “miracle” skill. Try running without it for a while, your performance as a team should hardly be diminished. You can still bait skills by doing quick maneuvering. Veil is an alright skill for.. well nothing. There’s no reason to use Veil when you can stealth up your team with a Thief in PvE. I was about to say you could use it for skipping enemies, but truly, not even there is Veil really all that useful. Not when others can do what it’d do, better. Granted there is alternative options available that is. In GvG you’d use a Thief to stealth the harassers. Much more useful.

PS: And ok, fair enough, I shouldn’t say nobody gets fooled by Veil tactics. But most people with some experience aren’t going to fall for it. It’s not a miracle that shifts the tide of battle. The team’s capabilities individually and together is.

I play with the zerg from time to time, but I won’t slot Veil for nobody. Veil is as pointless as trying to run backwards into the midst of the zerg fray, on a squishy build, without equipping weapons. Blindfolded.

Nobody is fooled by it. Nobody is caught off guard because of it. Fields are still thrown down exactly where you are moving so stealthily towards your foes. It’s easy to predict movement when you can see half the tail before they pass through the field. The mid- to the back of the tail is going to be targets of ranged skills regardless, so it only protected the precious Commander and his up-close posse from direct attacks, for mere moments. Veil, is overrated. It doesn’t last long enough to be of impact. It is a tool for fool Commanders to shout about.

I do my job. I don’t die. I remove Boons and lock down our enemies while dealing damage. Enemies who goes down in the blink of an eye once they can’t move anywhere. Does my team notice? Probably not. Nobody likely notices the lockdown in their midst. But I provide support far more valuable than some ineffective short attempt of a stealth-engagement. I don’t die. I do my job. I resurrect our downed allies, while I lock down, dealing damage. We just wiped teams twice our size. We had no Veil. The Commander still cries for it. A fool, crying after an unnecessary tool.

Lockdown, more potent than shatter when you’ve learned the ropes, adds more “support” through control and frustrating the enemies, the best condition the game has to offer. Takes time to master however, and you will stink at it initially, so expect to invest a few months to half a year before you get anywhere near remotely decent and consistent with the mindset. Then again, it took a few months before you got anywhere near remotely decent and consistent with Mesmer as a profession in the first place, starting out, like it did for all of us who loves this profession—so what’s a few more?

Note that you obviously need to get used to the idea of still shattering. Shattering is as key a mechanic to Mesmer, as interrupts has been a core mechanic since our Guild Wars days. Sometimes you will want your illusions to provide pressure however. Look at the situation and learn when you benefit more from leaving them out, and when you want to use them to either interrupt further, deal damage or as avoidance through Distortion.

Mesmer is also not a “only damage” profession, no profession needs to be. Tell your friends to get their heads out of their cracks. But I will agree with them that if your build can’t hold its own, it’s a liability to the team. Every build needs to function on its own to some extent.

Edit: —"Kitten kitten kitten kitten. Kitten this kitten kitten kitten meow kitten kitten filter."

tobascodagama.2961:

Absconditus.6804:

But wait, Robert, isn’t this something that you could do through scripting?

He literally just told us that it isn’t.

And I literally just questioned why not, with a case suggestion.

Again, you click on the skill, it starts the timer he mentions should be doable, and at the same time it stores a variable for your characters current co-ordinates, which serves as your portal location. From these co-ordinates, you can then calculate a radius while polling the updated location of the player character (as the timer updates the text shown on the UI), to see if the Portals will link up (with some minor inaccuracy granted, like everything else in the game), adjusting the UI accordingly (player outside of range, red bar on the bottom of the skill button, player within, remove red bar). If you click the Portal skill again, the timer is cleared, variables gets sent into the memory garbage collection, UI resets to recharge updates. If the timer, times out, the same thing happens, there’s no difference.

There is no reason to have the skill not work if you are outside of range for them to link up, that I understand would require additional code. The same goes for adding an arrow to point between the two, that’s not something local to the Mesmer in terms of UI updates. For that matter, sometimes you may want to throw down a Portal that doesn’t work, as a distraction, without risking some poor soul taking it unaware. It’d be perfectly fine to just have a indication if it will be a dud or not. As well as a timer to show how long you got before you got to place that exit. The skill works fine, this would be QoL UI updates on the local front.

Ross is the biggest sinner of them all. He played Warrior. WARRIOR! There are no butterflies on Warrior!

Robert Gee.9246:

Adding a timer buff is simple, but having a range or direction indicator is much more difficult due to how the skill is implemented. Portal is managed heavily through code rather than script due to its unique functionality so adding something like this would likely require changing some of the underling structure of the skill.

But wait, Robert, isn’t this something that you could do through scripting? The entry Portal is placed. As we do so, the player co-ordinates are temporarily stored for its life cycle, indicating its location, then we calculate a radius from these co-ordinates while polling the players movement, to either show or hide the red line, indicating if the player has moved outside the range of which where an exit Portal will be functional?

Never mind this arrow suggestion, what most Mesmer’s has wanted for the longest time, is a indication to tell them if they are running outside the range of which the Entry and Exit will link up, or.. a more surefire way of not dropping a dud. This must be something doable on the scripting side of things, right? The same way a timer would be? Couldn’t you perhaps even use the same timer to poll the movement of the player, store the Entry location (player co-ordinates on placement) and updating the UI, reducing workload?