Guild Wars 2

MRA.4758:

About to the (unexpected) match-up: After having faced rather weak servers for the past two weeks, this week will be a tough one.
~MRA

Made me lol…. someone from Rivercart saying they faced weak servers despite having to hide constantly in towers with more AC’s than really necessary! What you mean, MRA, is for two weeks you fought servers who couldn’t match your coverage and didn’t want to fight against your AC’s

I just opened 1000 Normal Coffers, got 3 tickets, pretty decent for RNG compared to other boxes we’ve had.

1000 Normal coffers, 3 tickets, 6 minis and a bunch of potions and stuff.

Easily dodge-able/block-able skill that has a 3min cool down and pretty much only works in 1v1 situations and even then, the player being moa’d still can just run away… hardly OP. I’ve been moa’d before while on my mes, laughed it off and carried on attacking the other mes, didn’t change the fight much.

Seen it used often in PVP from a stealth opener on a guardian defending a point, works really well there… but anywhere else its a pointless skill.

Definitely on board for the Elite Phantasm stuff! Giant glowing pink butterfly of doom, helloooo!

Rezzet.3614:

AkiraZero.8514:

I love when Thieves use the “l2p” response or try to claim that they are the squishiest class in the game – Lets face it, when you have the best mobility, best burst and are able to stay in stealth the majority of a fight… your squishy-ness really is meaningless!

then again wich class isnt squishy as full glass cannon that “we are squishy” argument is completely invalid they are the only class that runs glass cannon and doesnt get punished for mistakes .

Precisely, if I went GC on any of my character I would expect to put out some insane burst… I’d also expect to end up dead after I’ve gotten through my skills. At no point would I expect to be able to casually stroll away from the fight heading to kill my next group of unsuspecting targets.

Put it this way, when 1v1 dueling comes into the game, how are you really going to defend the thief when we can all pretty much agree that even bad Thieves aren’t going to be losing many 1v1 battles.

Piogre.2164:

Thief needs to be a less consequence-free class. There’s no good reason why a pathetically useless player like myself should be able to do so well just because I rolled a thief.

In terms of WvW.. this right here is exactly what it comes down to. No risk, all reward!

Jumper, you are a highly skilled Thief in PvP and I totally respect being able to pull off what you do, but in WvW, thief is a no skill required class, if WvW players had to work half as hard as you do in PvP they would probably reroll to a different class!

Jumper.9482:

AkiraZero.8514:

I love when Thieves use the “l2p” response or try to claim that they are the squishiest class in the game – Lets face it, when you have the best mobility, best burst and are able to stay in stealth the majority of a fight… your squishy-ness really is meaningless!

Best mobility, with shortbow yes. This, however, is intended.

Best burst? No, S/D Ele does more burst dmg than dagger mainhand. And thats not even when built glass cannon.
Mesmer does the same amount as a full backstab mug combo…every 10 seconds…AOE.
Guardian and Warrior can both do far more burst than thief if specced for it.
Ranger pet burst can hit upwards of 15k (1shotting a thief)
Engineer 100nades build used to do ~16k+ instantaneously but it was nerfed.

Stealth majority of the fight? With 30 in Shadow Arts and D/P yes and they also lose out on a good ~20% of their dmg—not to mention the time stealthed not capping or helping teammates. That’s why nearly all Thieves in tPvP take 30 in shadow arts yes? Or is it only the super good ones?..

You misunderstand me, In PvP they seem like they could use a buff in places as it takes a thief a lot more skill to work in PvP team fights as you’re having to purposely stay in one place for point capping/defending, but in WvW… whole different story, since their only purpose seems to be to troll the living hell out of everyone they dont need to worry about capping and helping out with the servers objectives or team play and they dont need to spec for defense since they aren’t there to defend anything.
While I agree that in PvP there are many better classes, in WvW -where point objectives arent a factor, thieves are just totally out of control!

I think its about time the skills we’re completely split and relooked at for all areas of the game, what works in PvP doesnt always work in WvW/PvE and at the moment everything seems to be tweaked for PvP.

As an example of why things dont work the same, Warriors… most OP thing to exist in PvE… really UP in PvP. Things need looking at and balancing out for different areas rather than just balancing for one place and forgetting everywhere else.

Retal is definitely fine, no need to let it go down the road that Confusion did.
As a Mes I don’t have any real “rapid fire aoe” so maybe I don’t feel it as much, but tbh even in mass zergs when I can see it proccing when I attack I just carry on, it doesn’t really do enough damage to warrant a cease fire. Although in fairness, confusion never stopped me either but that was nerfed so what do I know! D=

Been some great fights this week, it’s a shame the skill lag is such a game ruiner for everyone! Whenever all 3 servers come together it pretty much becomes unplayable! Been a few times when we’ve had commanders shouting “push!” and we all basically just laughs because skills just don’t want to work haha.

I think all of us on AG were pretty much dreading facing two German servers this week, you both have very different play styles than we do but its been quite fun anyway so keep it up everyone!

Also rather impressed that all 3 servers have pretty well coordinated zergs this week, even though there are a lot of pugs everywhere people seem to be moving as 1 and working well together, just goes to show that you don’t have to be in an organised guild to contribute to the action!

I love when Thieves use the “l2p” response or try to claim that they are the squishiest class in the game – Lets face it, when you have the best mobility, best burst and are able to stay in stealth the majority of a fight… your squishy-ness really is meaningless!

rchu.8945:

anyone checked out the state of the game that just took place this week? I read on the ranger forum that pet damage is getting nerfed (lol). Just curious if anyone that participated heard anything about Mesmer related issues being looked at (or more nerf bat incoming)…

They didnt really touch on many classes other than Warrior and Necro.
That being said, some of the guests on the show brought up the issue of Into The Void and Moa Morph, so no doubt Anet will shaft us over for the sake of PVPers instead of just fixing those things on the PVP side instead of as a whole!

We’ve been pretty neglected lately, nothing’s really been fixed, I myself just keep expecting the worst tbh, it seems we get hit everytime!

Aarean.5398:

There is nothing luck based about this minigame outside everyone lagspiking at the same time while you have the crab. I win every match by far and im really good with reflexive events like this. Sorry if your class choice doesnt carry you. Guess mesmers have to lose sometimes lol. Warrior crushing everyone with ease for once.

If this is aimed at me you should know that I was talking about the last man standing thing, which is extremely luck based, there is no way you as a player can set every other opponent up to die at once. I have this achi, but it wasn’t through any skill of my own, I just happened to luck out and have everyone standing in a corner at the time when Karkas rolled. In most games the good players will spread out and look to take a grab as the carrier runs away from the angry mob instead of mindlessly chasing the carrier. When those vets spawn and I’m not holding the crab you can bet your backside I wont be chasing you, no last man standing while I’m around!

And also, I rarely lose in Crab Toss, so my class obviously carries me through here I guess

Got to love when people claim they are being “forced” to do stuff!
Seriously, just don’t do it if you’re really that against it, aside from missing out on a few achi’s you aren’t missing out on anything major or game changing.

I for one love this minigame, I certainly wouldn’t go as far as saying its PVP in terms of actual combat, its been labelled as such due to the fact its between multiple players and not against NPCs. There will be games such as the Bar Brawl and Drinking Games and Keg Toss that fall into this PVP category even though they aren’t combat, again no one will be forced to do them but they will likely have lots of achi’s attached to them.

While the Crabtacular achi might be somewhat “luck based”, the rest of the game requires some skill to win, much like the rest of the game though, once you’ve figured out what works best it becomes pretty easy to come out on top all the time.

I’m also glad its been added to the daily list, its just 1 more thing I can enjoy doing towards my daily

I’ve seen a lot of people having problems with this, rather than mess about with macros etc, just switch the key binding of dodge from V to C , you have far less need to stretch your thumb out to hit both, I tend to rest the tip of my thumb over the C anyway so it made sense to switch it. I hit the dodge jumps 100% of the time and I have been using it long before the SAB, I thought everyone did tbh!
When I had it bound to V I found myself hitting everything but V, C seems to cause me no hassle at all

What Declan said is correct! You basically will get a second chest on each boss the first time you do it that day which has the Rare in it.

Although, the normal event chest CAN still give rares/exotics/Precursors but just at a standard drop rate. Which still seems to me like it would be worth doing the easy ones again on alts even for a slim chance at rares since I often get more than 1 anyway.

The only way illusions or clones will spawn on top of a keep is if the player being attacked is stood right on the edge of the wall on top of the “lip”, that is because our attacks are based on line of sight and are spawned on a target. Clones spawned next to a Mesmer will not run up the side of a keep on top of walls like ranger pets were doing so.
We are at no more of an advantage than you are, if the enemy is standing on the wall behind the raised lip, our clones/illusions/attacks in general will not hit due to line of sight.

Iavra.8510:

Quite depressing to see Aurora Glades famous guilds relying on superior numbers during night times to win their fights

You also seem to got quite a bunch of cowards on your server. If they are fighting (and losing) 3on1 against me they shouldn’t have to kite me into 3 other guys…oh i hate guardians lack of proper CC…

/edit: But i have to say: During primetime we almost always got the highest ticks. In my opinion, that makes us this matchups best server

Coming from someone on MS I think that’s the funniest thing I’ve heard! I’m from the UK so when I play during the morning/daytime, Millers have a zerg running on pretty much all the borderlands! You might not have the numbers at night time when some of our more dominant guilds are about, but you certainly have the numbers during the daytime!
What you guys fail to realise is that our “superior numbers” aren’t superior, we just tend to stick to our own borderland and EB, I don’t know what it is about DE servers, but they tend to flock to our borderland and then complain that we have numbers instead of going to other borderlands lol. Yesterday I noticed that both MS and AM had full control over their own borderlands and were both pushing into AGs and not touching each other, must be country pride or something!

As for the cowards comment, also funny seeing how we have seen massive amounts of players from both MS and AM using the glitched invulnerable zones in the south supply camps to just grief players, refusing to come out and only doing so to pick off people and then run back into the safe spot!
Lets face it, AG have done extremely well this week to fight off two servers! Just yesterday we managed to hold off against an attack on Hills and Bay at the same time! The guys at Hills did a great job considering we had no supply to defend ourselves with but we held the north inner gate from two consecutive attacks before having the chance to fix it! The people defending bay had to stop multiple golems from taking it but they managed it!

Regardless of who’s done what this week Id say its been a great match up! Had some fantastic fights and seen some great teamwork from all the servers! Proud to be a Gladian this week after being so outnumbered during the morning periods when our guys we’re all at work/school and we were being pushed from both sides at all times!

loneknight.8425:

AkiraZero.8514:

I’m a hammer warrior, didn’t matter what skills I used to lock him down nothing worked, he’d go invisible right in front of me, I’d immediately hit hammer skill 3 which is a stun and the next thing I know he was bouncing around miles away!

You must be part of the warrior minority who can’t stun a thief who stealth, as claimed by you, in close range. Or the other warriors I have met must be sPVP elites o.O

Touchy touchy, maybe he was just a better Thief than you
I’d like to say I knew what he was doing but someone said he was probably switching to shortbow and using (heartseeker?), whatever the skill is to get distance on us as soon as he stealthed.
As many others have said, AOE’s/Stuns and Knockback’s don’t help when a thief can so easily move out of range.

Karolis.4261:

AkiraZero.8514:

Thieves are beyond OP, the fact they have high damage plus high mobility plus high stealth and high escapability all rolled into one far out weights the fact they are “squishy”.
If they didn’t have the high damage the other stuff would be bearable!
When it comes to Risk VS Reward, Thieves are all reward!
Had 1 theif yesterday making 10 of us run round like idiots trying to stop him, he knew he was trolling us too as he was just stealth’ing when we attacked him and then appearing and literally bouncing round like a kangaroo in circles for the fun of it!
I’m a hammer warrior, didn’t matter what skills I used to lock him down nothing worked, he’d go invisible right in front of me, I’d immediately hit hammer skill 3 which is a stun and the next thing I know he was bouncing around miles away!
If being able to run circles round 10 people with no risk at all isn’t overpowered then nothing is!

They need to rethink about the Thief package as a whole, either swing the nerf bat at their damage to compensate for the rest of the stuff or take away some of the stealth’ing capabilities so they can’t ditch and run quite so easily!

Don’t get me wrong, I think they are a great class and have the potential for amazing scouting abilities and such, but they don’t play as a team due to the fact they can just go gank teams of people for the lulz!

Now tho asked you to chase him around with 10 ppl grp ? dont you have places to be with such force instead of chasing solo thief ? Just turttle up and move your way lol.

Would have been a great plan except the thief was following us while we tried to take back supply camps, like I said, he was trolling us knowing full well we weren’t going to stop him. (Although we did eventually when more people turned up and he panicked and back himself up against a wall and everyone laid into him).
The point still stands that no class should have that much yummy goodness rolled into 1!

Thieves are beyond OP, the fact they have high damage plus high mobility plus high stealth and high escapability all rolled into one far out weights the fact they are “squishy”.
If they didn’t have the high damage the other stuff would be bearable!
When it comes to Risk VS Reward, Thieves are all reward!
Had 1 theif yesterday making 10 of us run round like idiots trying to stop him, he knew he was trolling us too as he was just stealth’ing when we attacked him and then appearing and literally bouncing round like a kangaroo in circles for the fun of it!
I’m a hammer warrior, didn’t matter what skills I used to lock him down nothing worked, he’d go invisible right in front of me, I’d immediately hit hammer skill 3 which is a stun and the next thing I know he was bouncing around miles away!
If being able to run circles round 10 people with no risk at all isn’t overpowered then nothing is!

They need to rethink about the Thief package as a whole, either swing the nerf bat at their damage to compensate for the rest of the stuff or take away some of the stealth’ing capabilities so they can’t ditch and run quite so easily!

Don’t get me wrong, I think they are a great class and have the potential for amazing scouting abilities and such, but they don’t play as a team due to the fact they can just go gank teams of people for the lulz!

No laurels for this January’s monthly achievement. Would have been unfair to throw it in there when a lot of people had already completed their monthly weeks ago so they wont be added to monthly’s until Feb.

Just done this with a few guildies, took a while for us all to get 10 combos but we did in the end. Seems slightly random, some people were getting it whilst others weren’t even though everyone was using combos. I was on my mesmer so I was just laying down null field and feedback and timewarp and veil for everyone to go through.
Definitely needs looking at, shouldn’t be on the last hit, a combo during any kill should count really!

Nice to see more friendly guilds joining us on AG! Welcome and have fun!
Wouldn’t worry about ques, we vary rarely have ques and when we do its only for a few mins on our own BL and EB, there are two other borderlands which will never come close to full so there is always somewhere to find action!

Starfall.6425:

And you think JS would attack AM-BL when they got huge problems on their own BL? (Btw they often did attack AM.. but sometimes even we are defending our stuff..)
The last 7 hours on JS-BL every fight at a keep was between all three servers and not just two… it’s nothing special anymore to attack simultaniously.

“Please don’t jump to conclusions without really reading what I had written.” <- could also say that now.

My comments were more over last week’s match up than this weeks, stop trying to cause trouble over nothing and get over it, your acting like I’m attacking AM’s ability when all I mentioned was JS’s strategic movements against us.
They played a good game leaving you guys to fight us so we wouldn’t be able to focus on them to take back first.

Starfall.6425:

AkiraZero.8514:

I hope you noticed that AM is constantly pressing JS quite hard on their BL. Durin the Reset we held 66% of JS and let AG completely alone. So please stop with commants like we double team on AG.

/btt

[DP] wants to greet UNTY and we appreciate the really really great 3-way-fights we constantly have on JS-BL.

Not even close to what I said, what I said was the French are leaving AM alone and attacking AG whenever AM are pushing into OUR borderland, I wasn’t insinuating there was any double teaming going on, it was merely to point out that they were using your attacks as perfect timing to launch their own attacks on us, which is smart on their part as we have to really decide where and when we defend as we cant defend against 2 servers at once.
Please don’t jump to conclusions without really reading what I had written.

Aside from misreading what I had written, it was a compliment to the tactics used by the French

Starfall.6425:

What do you want to argue about? We easily won before the transfers.. thats a fact. Now you are stronger and therefore won yourself. So what do you want to tell me? I’m confused.

Yeh I remember you guys beating us before transfers too… back when we had to spend a week defending towers because a certain guild on your server was constantly hacking and jumping into towers… not to mention all the bot armys we had to deal with on a daily basis back then.
Not directed at you/your guild, but trust me, you had more than enough unfair advantages back then so don’t act like it was all easy wins.

Fact is, AG has not only grown in numbers but we’ve grown in skill, we’ve proved it in the past few weeks so perhaps instead of talking about previous wins we see AM step up a bit this week.

Staying on topic, kind of bored of vs’ing the same servers over and over, but JS’s sudden increase in numbers has made things interesting, they seem to be leaving AM alone for the most part and hitting up the AG borderland whenever AM are attacking us, smart tactics!
Be nice to see which servers can keep up the pace this week! Other than JS’s supreme presence… pretty much everywhere…. they don’t seem to have quite nailed an organisational stand point just yet, its more power in numbers, which many of AG’s and AM’s coordinated guilds seem to be able to deal with pretty well, be nice to see what those huge JS zerg’s could do with a little bit more organization.

Had plenty of nice fights from both servers so far, hope it keeps up like that!

The unfortunate reality is that the devs don’t act upon reports quick enough for it to make any difference. By the time a player is banned for exploiting the weeks match up is probably long over and their server has gained all the points that shouldn’t have been given to them.

I think an easy fix… at least for “fly hacking/jump hacking” would be to make all vets/guards within a tower/keep have a buff that stops them taking any damage unless a wall or gate has been breached. Once a gate or wall has been breached the buff vanishes and will only reappear once all gates/walls are at least at 10% hp so they are “up” again and have been at a stable up position for “X” amount of time to give any players still inside chance to take down a lord.

The other solution would be a “report exploiter/hacker” on the report section that would alert a dev to jump straight into the match and see it for themselves, this would need much more moderation though.

jportell.2197:

Imo mesmers can stealth like thieves (not for as long) Much higher burst damage if running a shatter build and we can stealth an entire zerg w/in a 1200 radius… But we get no rage?

We would have to make a super specific build/weapon/utility set to take advantage of stealth and even then its not really an ideal situation.
To get the benefit of speed and stealth you’d have to run something like S/T – S/F, which limits some of your off hand skills already. Most Mesmer stealths including the elite are so short you’d have to chain them with really specific timing to stay invisible, and a lot of them such as Mass invis and Veil give off major clues as to where you are, as does temporal curtain. A Thief can just go in and out without much need to worry about these sorts of things, other than that dome type stealth they use.
They can stealth and move around quickly with ease and be still in stealth when they have moved completely out of your range.
As a Mes, once you attack, your out of stealth, trying to get back in quickly cuts you off from your attacks again so your not gaining anything other than time to reposition yourself for a next attack or to regain health, at which point your opponent could have already fully healed.
Could work for sneaking up on people, cant see it being as effective as a normal shatter/phant build for actual fights.

Which is where the Thieves come into play, they have a style of play that makes it really easy to stealth around and sneak up and do massive amounts of damage and flee before you can react. It shouldn’t be so simple, it certainly wouldn’t be that simple for us.
Don’t get me wrong, there are some amazing Theifs around, I’ve witnessed videos where one Theif solo’d large groups by himself with P/D, he stealthed but he used his full range of skills which goes to show Thiefs can be more than one trick ponies. Its just most are the two button kind that couldn’t run another build if they had it handed to them on a plate.

The fact that more and more people roll Thieves now because they think they can be OP stealth ninjas makes it easier for us, theres way more skill-less Thiefs than there has ever been! Most of them ninja up on me and try to kill me and I can just stand there and lol at them as I mass spawn and shatter clones the moment they come out of Stealth.

I run a glass cannon set up, all berserkers except 4 armor parts which are Pow/Prec/Tough. Never have any issues in AC or FotM.
I have a trait that removes Conditions when you heal and other than that I just use the condition remove mantra during the spider queen boss and the defend the cannons bit, never really need condition removal any other place in the dungeon.
I’d say you probably just need to be more reactive against attacks, I find myself constantly dodging and moving about and survive perfectly fine, usually longer than heavy armor classes.
In dungeons I tend to run with GS/Staff though to keep me at a distance from everything, staff is great for defensive measures, using Choas storm and shield on yourself so you can pass those boons along with whatever Might you can stack to your party.

Utility wise I mostly use signet of Inspiration along with Mirror images and I tend to swap out the 3rd depending on the situation. Usually between Reflect/blink/mantra of resolve/veil or decoy.

You can easily tell when someone doesn’t play a Mesmer due to them thinking its all OP stuff with no effort… the skill level needed to play a Mesmer far exceeds that of most – if not all other class bar the D/D Ele bunker build.

We may be able to put out high damage in a few seconds, but usually once you’ve fired off your high burst as a Mesmer your left with very little else to cover your backside! We go down in a few hits, we have no real aoe’s to compensate if shatters had major cooldowns. What you see when you get hit by a mesmer is someone using everything they can muster to take you down as quickly as possible as we aren’t all bulky high def/high damage classes.

There doesn’t need to be cooldowns between shatters, using more than 1 in a row means we’re throwing out everything we have and leaving nothing in the bag, if we use them all and it doesn’t take a player down then chances are we’re going to die!

Of course Phantasms can spawn right on a target… most classes skills hit their target straight away, why should our skills wait around to die before they do anything? No phantasm should ever be able to get off more than 1 attack if the opponent is awake, they only take 1-2 hits to kill!

Being good at a Mesmer takes huge amounts of effort, its all about skill, timing and knowing your limits, where not a 1-2 button spam class like others out there that can pull of major damage with no effort at all.

If nothing else, Mesmer’s should be buffed in ways that make non shatter builds more desirable to play, right now its one of the very few ways to get any damage out of us so that’s the build everyone uses!

Cymru.3942:

That guild are exploiting all the time….a ban is needed the Guild is Mit Gehirn (PRO)

They are giving your server a bad nreputation!!

Sounds like they are probably the AM guild that we’re hacking against us on AG last week. Their were 5-6 people in a guild called Dunkle Wachter [DW] using some sort of teleport hack to appear in the lords rooms (seemed to be able to teleport directly to npcs/mobs even whilst we were in combat with them (no mesmers or theifs, was always the ranger that stood out when she tele’d). Caught them multiple times trying to take Cliffside and Sunny to the point where we had to have people guard them all day long. We reported them over and over but nothing was done about it, saw them doing it for like 4 days straight!
Thankfully no other AM players tried to take advantage of [DW]s antics so we managed to hold the majority of their attacks off without much problem.

There are certainly plenty of hacks out there, they pop up from time to time in really obvious ways. We had 4-5 days straight of a specific guild on AM using “teleport” like hacks to not only get around fast but to just jump right into lords rooms. I dont mean like ones Ive seen in the past where Mesmers have literally jumped over walls and portalled other people in, I mean all different classes just able to tele straight to a target location!
It was annoying having to watch them appear in towers all the time but it was worse when you try to kill them and they just tele to the futherest mob/gathering node away from you, more noticeably so when rangers did it as their pets didn’t tele too, they just sort of ran off in the direction the players tele’d in!
I have noticed players moving really fast too, I’m a mes so a few hits on me when I’m not paying attention and I go down fast anyway, but I’ve seen players just take me down in seconds with auto attacks because it was sped up so fast!

All you can do is report them under the “scamming” but it wont get anything done fast, we were reporting the same 4 players for like 4-5 days straight and they still kept coming, it obviously takes some time to get things done on Anet’s end!

Svarty.8019:

Word to the wise on AG. Don’t come to rely on the former GH guilds, they obviously have a track record of defecting not just to any server, but the enemy server, when times are hard.

Good luck.

We don’t rely on them anyway. As great as it is to have them playing for us, we’ve been improving as a server for a few weeks now! We were absolutely out manned for months and plummeted down the rankings but as of late we have really pulled together! The commanders are doing their best to bring players together (not just guilds, but pugs too), teaching them the basics, working on strategies and practicing techniques etc so that we can cooperate as a server!
If KISS chose to leave us after this match it will only change numbers, not the quality of the players we have who have been here for months trying to bring us back up in the rankings.
I sincerely hope KISS choose to stay with us, we welcome any guild regardless of size that can operate for the good of a server without having to be told what to do, that has always being the great thing about guilds such as UNTY, Ispy and FURY, not to mention all the guilds that are growing in numbers and becoming ever more present in WvW!
I’m sure they will teach us plenty of things to help us along the way regardless of how long they want to stay with us!

As for everyone talking about numbers and double teaming, why bother? There’s always going to be servers with higher number of players, but its always quality over quantity! There is no double teaming going on between any servers, I think everyone’s just trying to fight smartly at the moment and utilizing other servers attacks as distractions for their own! There have been plenty of times when we have held back from pushing further into other borderlands because while ever the other 2 servers focused on each other, they weren’t pounding on us!

One last shout out to the 5-6 man GH team on AG border yesterday afternoon ish who just kept pushing us out of the redwater supply camp, great work! That guardian in the CoF gear from OX was a beast, I was extremely impressed how often he threw himself into crowds and just mowed people down! /salute!

Hopefully next time we VS you on AM, all those guys from [DW] will have been banned! Having to watch them hack for the past 4 days has been ridiculous! Its a shame Anet wont jump in to monitor the situation after we’ve been reporting them! Seen the same 3-4 players running round teleing to random locations/npcs at will! (fly-hacking as well call it)Thankfully we’ve managed to catch them in the act most of the times and prevent them from taking towers but we’ve had to dedicate resources to watching towers which could have been used elsewhere to gain more points for us!
Extremely shameful behaviour for a guild on the server that’s winning! I hope you AM guys will keep an eye on them in future matches, they will bring the reputation of your whole server down if they keep it up!

Yukishiro.8792:

Shatter build is best, just like it’s the best for everything right now.

^ This.

In all honesty, as far as dungeons go, any build is fine.
Dungeons are one of those places where Mesmer’s aren’t going to be putting out any major damage no matter what they do, you strength lies in your utility’s.
I’m full glass cannon but I only ever think of myself as a support class in dungeons, let stronger classes take the lead and be there to back them up with appropriate skills.

Time Warp is always going to make boss fights go by quicker, other classes will love you for it!
Mass Invis/Veil is a great tool for skipping trash mobs and bits of dungeons people want to avoid. It will also help when your group has aggro’d far to many mobs, I tend to stay at the back of the pack so when I see the group retreating I’ll drop one of these two to get them to safety.
Feedback… lets face it, AMAZING skill, works fantastic on crowds of ranged mobs, watch them kill themselves!
Often get those bits in dungeons where you have to run past boulders and spikes that randomly pop up to get to an off switch, I usually drop a portal and then run and blink as far as I can past these bits, drop the portal exit and bring everyone across, saves so much time and effort!
As far as traits go, we have plenty of helpful stuff like giving allies vigor on shatters etc!

As long as you work with these things, everything else you have just aids others in killing. I tend to carry my staff in off hand purely for getting 3 staff clones up and stacking might on my allies to help them, it does very little condition damage as I’m not spec’d for it but might on high DPS characters is more helpful than my own damage, plus chaos storm is great for boons too! (the extra bounce trait works well with this too).

With farming, full on shattering into masses of mobs during events is amazing, people say we fail at tagging in Orr but once you start shattering you find you get loads of drops!

Ursan.7846:

Osicat.4139:

I can recomend this guide. The guy who made it answer questions in it aswell. Its great

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/guide-WvWvW-Shatter-cat/first

/ Osicat

Hello, thanks for your help.

This is actually an interesting point that I was wondering. From my understanding so far, when you summon the phantasms, they attack your enemy, but you have the option to shatter them? Is it higher damage if I summon clones for the sole purpose of shattering them? Or is it better to let them live and let them dish out damage?

Clones are rubbish for damage, their only real purpose is for shattering or for distracting your enemies, they’ll either take the damage that you should take or they’ll be used for shattering to make up your burst damage.

Clones = tools for shattering/bursting
Phantasms = high DPS attacks.

People tend to either go one way or the other, using everything for shatters or only using Phants for damage, which is hard as the high hitting Phantasms are currently not worth using if you read some of the recent threads.

When it comes down to it, you’re never going to be hitting massive damage until your level 80 with full exotics anyway so the main thing is to learn the play style until then. Kiting is your best friend, throw out some trash clones as your def (they die easily but can be made really easy too), while they take the punishment you can run circles round mobs dealing damage with other attacks/phantasms if they decide to spawn/hit things.

Glass cannon will only really be doable if they fix the Berserker on GS (which they know is broken and are trying to fix) and using a Sword/Pistol as secondary. But honestly, right now you want to follow one of these shatter spec builds as their all thats working for us now.

I’m not sure what sort of gear works best for shatter builds, but they’re the only way your going to get high burst at the moment! I’m in full berserkers gear and Ruby equip and since phantasms have been messed with its really not advisable as a build, My burst dps isn’t enough to take monsters down before they spank you to death.

I’d like an Elite skill that spawns a Giant illusionary butterfly that fly’s into air and has a big old whirl wind of small butterflies aoe attack! Because lets face it, Mesmer’s need more butterflies!

Just imagine it, casting it on top of a keep in WvW, watching it high up in the sky just launch a billion tiny illusionary butterflies in a whirlwind so that enemies cant see anything and get damaged at the same time… oooh the dream!

tqhx.2190:

alanis.6094:

AkiraZero.8514:

I think it’s time Anet gave up this whole “its not a pet its an illusion” type thing and just let us summon them like Ranger/necro/thief pets, with a set HP and skill set that attack anything we attack and die after they take X amount of damage. We rely on clones/phant’s for far too much right now and they keep becoming less usuable with each patch.

Making Phantasms to be similar to Necro minions would be an interesting case study to see how quickly this forum blows up crying about needing to re-roll.

My other 80 is a Necro, and I’d be incredibly giddy if minions were made to be 1/3 as strong as Phantasms.

I agree necro minions could use a little boost, Phantasms are not that powerful though lol. They drop like flies and have huge cooldowns. If a zerker gets off more than 1 attack on you in PVP you literally have to be afk

I literally laugh out loud when I see my zerker hit someone multiple times, I just sit there thinking why are you not killing it, its stood there for a good 5+ seconds between attacks!
Minions and Phant’s are not even in the same league though. Minions are there to aid you where as I usually feel like I’m there to aid the phantasms I spawn as they are my main source of damage! Without them I’m all glass and no cannon and to be forced to change all of my gear because of this is what is most wrong with these nerf’s!

alanis.6094:

AkiraZero.8514:

I think it’s time Anet gave up this whole “its not a pet its an illusion” type thing and just let us summon them like Ranger/necro/thief pets, with a set HP and skill set that attack anything we attack and die after they take X amount of damage. We rely on clones/phant’s for far too much right now and they keep becoming less usuable with each patch.

Making Phantasms to be similar to Necro minions would be an interesting case study to see how quickly this forum blows up crying about needing to re-roll.

My other 80 is a Necro, and I’d be incredibly giddy if minions were made to be 1/3 as strong as Phantasms.

Not at all, if they had lower damage and say our standard attacks we’re increased slightly or we had a higher baseline of toughness/vit for survivability to make up for it then at least we’d have some sort of balance, right now we’re a light armor class with no burst dps and the Phant’s don’t stick around long enough to apply and conditions etc.

To put it simply, when it comes to RISK vs REWARD we’re all risk and no reward! Without being a high condition/shatter build we have nothing in the way of diversity. I’m sure a Necro can have some diversity into what builds and wep’s they use regardless of minion damage.
I’d take lower damage with some abilities like knock downs or poison etc than having a phantasm that spawns… stands around.. dies before its helped me in any way at all!

What you see as a minor nerf I see as the majority of my damage going down the toilet without giving me any extra damage elsewhere or survivability in return. I see it as a skill on every weapon I have that is pretty much not worth using.

I think the main problem right now is that only condition/shatter builds are really viable for us. Phantasms are just not worth the effort now, they spawn, stand around, die before they get off an attack or manage to attack and just don’t do the kind of damage they should be!

When it comes to wvw…
Any other class spec’ed to glass cannon can get some serious burst off really quickly, right now full glass cannon Mesmer’s have no burst at all, before the patch on the 15th of last month I could hit 7k crits with izerker, after the patch I was hitting maybe 2-4k tops, now I’m lucky if I’m hitting 1-2k with it. I’ve already had to retrait to more of a shatter spec build but right now its looking like I’m going to have to rework all of my gear to a condition build! Warden pretty much dies every time before its done anything, other phant’s just aren’t attacking quick enough for it to be considered a good use of a skill!

We shouldn’t be having to cast a Phantasm and then running away in hope’s that it does some damage before we get stomped into the ground, but that’s exactly what it feels like at the moment, it’s like putting 1 bullet into a 6 barrel gun and playing Russian roulette, you fire and just hope something going to happen!
Phantasms don’t do any more damage than other classes high burst skills, why are we the only ones who are treated this way, they don’t get delays that make it easier to dodge their skills!

Now this is where people jump in and start throwing around stuff like “X build still works or Y build works”… why should we have to re-do our whole character to a few specific builds because we’ve been nerfed to the point where we dont have access to more than 1-2 builds/wep sets. The game should be balanced enough that ALL builds should be viable and have potential, I should have to change everything because of nerfs every patch!

It comes down to balance between classes, at what point do Mesmers become auto attackers because Phantasm’s are just unusable and if we do have to turn to auto attacking, why bother being a Mesmer at all, theres’ plenty of other classes out damaging us with auto attacks.

We have gone from the most unique class in the entire game to one trick wonders, every Mesmer is going to have to be a shatter/cond mes now and it just shouldn’t be like that.

I think it’s time Anet gave up this whole “its not a pet its an illusion” type thing and just let us summon them like Ranger/necro/thief pets, with a set HP and skill set that attack anything we attack and die after they take X amount of damage. We rely on clones/phant’s for far too much right now and they keep becoming less usuable with each patch.

Been a great day for AG today, had a good few hours in the JS borderlands just taking as much as we can to get our points back up! Some great teamwork too, we seem to be getting better at listening to commanders and direction now, not as many people running off doing whatever they want – where ever they want!
Big thanks to Knack and Hun for commanding today there, was some great coordination and we did it efficiently!

I can solo a non upgraded supply camp with ease without any invaders there, so part of me thinks they should be harder to kill, but at the same time I’ve seen 4 invaders try to take Titan when it was fully upgraded and get totally destroyed by the Vets so they could be just fine!
I’d like to see more upgrade type’s in supply camps instead, maybe blockades/fences etc to slow invaders down a little more but not make it totally uncapable by small teams!

kribre.9683:

I would LOVE to see the AM server fix the guild SK Straumkrafen or something like that to tell them to stop do alt+f4, had LOADS of them do it at the bay in AG borderland now

I’ve found JS has been the worst for it so far, had like 5 of them alt+f4 on me this morning before I even downed them, was like they weren’t even going to let me have the pleasure of putting them to the floor let alone killing them, they just logged out as soon as it wasn’t going their way! It wouldn’t have been so bad but some of the times it happened it was just 1v1!

A bunch of AM guys did it too while a few of us Gladians were on the JS borderland capping the supply above hills which AM were defending, but it was right before a huge JS zerg appeared so I guess they heard Jade were coming and didn’t want to get double stomped
Tbh, if those AM guys would have stayed I would have fought along side them against that JS zerg, those French don’t seem to be able to move unless there’s another 20 guys with them!

Even though we on AG don’t have the numbers to keep up this week, we’ll put up some good battles! I’ve seen AM use some good tactics so far so it should test us a bit and help us to push some of our own tactics futher!

Teutooni.9572:

So AG is fielding even more numbers tonight? Oh joy. I already feel like a roadkill trying to defend our towers 5v30. Sigh

Honestly, AG, you have some very good players (same goes for WR ofc), but it’s hard to appreciate individual skill when you outnumber your opposition in every fight 5:1. It’s fine, it is effective with the downed mechanic etc. favoring zerging, but if you just organized and split in groups of 10-15 well coordinated people hitting multiple locations, I think it would be more educational for you and your enemies as well.

I think the problem we have is that we have being facing servers which have far-FAR superior numbers to us and the only way we made any impact against them was to run with a full zerg at 1 target at a time… unfortunately even though we have the numbers against both opponents this time we still get stuck in that routine of thinking everyone should stick together (not always the case, we do have commanders that try to split groups up… but lemmings will be lemmings!)

I know people keep “loling” when I and others have said we aren’t a high pop server.. but what you guys don’t realise is that we say this in comparison to the servers we’ve been VS’ing previously. Servers such as Miller Sound were easily outnumbering us 10-1 even at our peak times, they could have multiple zerg’s running round every map with 30+ people in each of them at a time. Other servers have outnumbered us too and I guess we’ve picked up bad habit’s trying to keep up with them.

On another note…

Those people bragging here about easily kills and such should realise that not everyone they VS is a dedicated WvW lvl 80! We have lots of new to wvw people joining us so not everyone’s going to be matching up against those who spend all their time doing it!
I’ve been running on my lvl 19 Ele and been jumped by 5+ invaders multiple times this week from both servers and then had to watch them “corpse stomp” me as if it was some great achievement. Don’t be one of those people!

[AVA]

Konfuzfanten.6503:

AkiraZero.8514:

I’m quite surprised to read comments that AG was portal bombing and turtle stacking tbh, its not like us to be so coordinated lol!

Ohh we portal bomb like a proper boss, every chance we get, we will portal bomb :p

We just dont turtle, mainly because i dont like the lack of mobility and im to lazy to get my ppl to spec for it.

That’s great! I hope I get to be part of this at some point! Always amazed when we can mobilize enough people into tactical attacks that work! Its been far too long that Gladian’s have just gone with the old zerg at random targets tactics!

Keep it up, hopefully other guild’s will start more strategic strikes too! We might move back up the ladders if we can always be this organised!

Omaris Mortuus Est.2738:

When inside the Vale supply camp looking at the entrance, players can jump from outside onto the hill on the right, then then just drop to the patch to the side to the roof. AG did it repeatedly whilst we defended Vale. There is a similar glitch on the left that I have seen some use but isnt used by many
As for reporting them, how can you report 30+ people?!!! KISS members will confirm it wasnt a one-off incident nor was it just a few! Yes 30 people is still a minority of the server, but they are ruining the game for all.
You should have seen Abaddons Mouth exploit the orbs, they werent even denying it!

I don’t think anyone has ever called this out as hacking before, its beyond simple to do and I don’t think I’ve ever witnessed a server not using this to get up onto the wall when sneaking into that camp! Its not like its any different than the borderland which can just hop through the back way!

As for numbers, AG isn’t a largely populated server, if you see a huge zerg, chances are its just all the people we have in one place, you’ll very rarely see us in large numbers on more than 1 map at a time! We tend to stick to our own map and EB!

You may think we’re large numbers compared to your own server, but in reality we have been severely outnumbered for months now which is why we have dropped down the ladder!

I’m quite surprised to read comments that AG was portal bombing and turtle stacking tbh, its not like us to be so coordinated lol! Things are looking up! Usually its small guilds running around with objectives while random’s just ignore the goals and try PvDooring anything they come across!

Just had some fun on the Whiteside border taking supply camps, think we annoyed you guys, it went from 1-2 people trying to stop 2 of us, to like 5-10 turning up at Arah to stop us xD Safe to say we knew we weren’t going to be able to ninja around so easily after that!

Omaris Mortuus Est.2738:

AG is Pro at exploiting glitches and cheating like mad just like Abaddon’s Mouth. it really is a shame that even though you have such huge numbers you have to resort to exploiting these exploits.

What a load of BS :S
We don’t have huge numbers and we certainly don’t cheat!
If you’ve seen an odd person cheating just report them, don’t blame the whole server for 1 bad apple, its very rare anyone has any issues with us!
We are a fair playing server, our small numbers pull together to do great things!

Vendris.4201:

I find your statement that glass is only good in a zerg to be contrary to my experience. I run shattercat with full rampager gear and I mostly attack and defend supply camps in WvW.

juno.1840:

I’d recommend a stat distribution of:

> 2000 power
> 1800 precision (>45% crit rate)
> 1300 toughness
> 1200 vitality

Glassy is great until you get hit then you’re dead. I love running into glassy mesmers on my GS mesmer because I know I’ll win.

Also glassy is only effective in a zerg where you can “hide” in the crowd. Get into a real fight (which you will at some point I guarantee it) and you’ll die quick. Then you’ll be like “<insert profession here> needs to be nerfed!!!”. In reality you just built your toon to die easy.

Agreed, even against groups when on my own I rarely find it to be too troublesome to survive and I’m full Glass Cannon in Berserkers gear. I usually only die if I get lazy and stop moving and don’t focus properly. Usually if I’m focused I can face off against 3-4 people easy enough and just keep moving and picking them off 1 at a time.
Again, as long as you play well and use your dodges well and your distortion skills you’ll be fine.

When it comes down to it though, WvW is supposed to be large group fights so you’ll be fine anyway, I never feel the need to hide in a crowd, I always plant myself on the front line or if the group is being chases by a large zerg I’ll hang behind to slow them down while the group escapes!

A good Mesmer is a smart Mesmer!

Full Glass Cannon is entirely usable in Wv3, I’ve always run with full zerkers and Ruby Equips and tbh I don’t know why anyone wouldn’t.
The amount of times I’ve been the last man standing in a group and managed to drive back multiple invaders on my own is ridiculous, I feel like a god sometimes lol.
It’s slightly harder now with all this LOS crap, I find that I can be doing really well against a group and then all of a sudden my Phants will just start giving me crap about “no line of sight” or “obstructed” when nothings in the way.
Its mostly about how well you play, if you know when to use dodging and how to avoid attacks in general then you’ll survive as well as any other build!
I have just switched to a more Shatter friendly glass cannon build though as I found myself to be using shatters a lot to hold off big groups anyway so it made sense to switch to something that helped my shatter better, although I’ve not changed my gear at all. I usually go GS for pure damage and then Staff for more defensive measures when I need to. Sword/torch is great too!