Guild Wars 2

sinject.4607:

Bacon Please.8407:

Just because you have great gear doesnt mean you will do well. However. Currently there is no counter to raw condition damage, there is no – Condition damage even though I believe there should. Conditions are very hard to counter as it is very set up and I have had to buy Holebrak runes and Melandru runes just to play a Power build which is not even on par with condition builds. Conditions need to be looked at, if it is mitigation of damage through toughness (to a certain percent cap) or changing how they are applied or granting immunity to certain conditions after they have been clensed for a short time. Something has to happen because nearly ever player I have encountered is running a condition face roll build. It is getting a bit stale.

I’m fully aware that the gear is only as good as the player wearing it; but i mentioned it because i know some idiot would mention something about glass builds and whatnot. But yeah i agree with everything else.

Xsorus.2507:

Sinjet don’t forget D/P Thieves, very overpowered spec in WvW if played properly.

Same with S/D

d/p and s/d are not overpowered at all. Thief is generally only overpowered to players who legitimately cannot counter them through skill; other than that thief is decently balanced and excels in what it is designed to do.

lol do you play a thief? p/d thieves are so op right now. stacking torment, and confusion… plus perma stealth.. .It’s very tough to counter…. it’s become the meta for thieves right now. It’s not an issue with skill when you get two stacks of torment ticking away 5k+ of hp, and if you want to halve that dmg you gotta stand still… imagine that – standing still while fighting a thief. lol it’s completely imbalanced unless you run a condition clearing class.

I think torment is a bigger issue than confusion imo. Confusion was never an issue if you manage how you fight – but torment… avg 3k dmg just for standing still – double if you move around. p/d thieves have become so mainstream it’s worse than their burst builds or d/p builds. You just have perma stealth thieves doing confusion, torment and everything else… they output far too much dmg 1v1. Torment needs to be fixed… right away.

Creo.8750:

I am a new player about to migrate from another MMO. I’ve been looking at GW2 for some time now, tried playing for a couple hours here and there, things looked fine.

But.

My main interest is WWW and, being a curious pup, I watched quite a number of streams (over the last few weeks, so not just the current holiday) to see what it looks like. In 90% of the cases all I saw was zergs – a big ball of people rolling from one location to another killing what little resistance they met with no visible strategy. Sometimes one big ball collided with another big ball, making for some chaos, but again – no visible strategy.

I know how zergs work in other MMOs (pretty mindless) so this is a huge turn off. My questions are:

Was I unlucky or is WWW for the most part really just a zerg? Can you have an interesting game playing WWW solo (I am not against small parties, but let’s keep it simple and insist on solo)?

Thanks.

You would have to go to the lower “tiers” which is a strange thing now that everything’s kind of mixed up. But servers like FC ET SF GOM HOD NSP AR will have a lot of small man play (5-10 ppl) then moving up to mid tiers such as CD SoS IoJ DR DH KN BP YB etc will be about 20-40 ppl depending on timezone. Anything ranked 6-4 will be about the 40-50 people. 3-1 will be about massive fights 60+ almost in every bl.

http://mos.millenium.org/na/

you can use that as a reference, though I wouldn’t base it on the “tier” since they’re kinda shuffled around in different places – but as long as you pick a server ranked 15 and lower you should see very reasonable fights but due to RnG you might occasionally fight a server with 3x your numbers.

Good luck.

Terrahero.9358:

I take pride in killing Thieves and Warriors.

kittens always running away, cheating death at every turn. Gives me a good feeling to drop the sudden realization on them that they can infact be killed.
Same thing with tanky Guardians. They think they are immortal sometimes.

This.

Thieves running away when they missed their gank chance is bad enough, but warriors. Oh man, using perma swiftness and a leap skill every 5s is ridiculous. I wish ANet would make it so that those skills require a target before it can be used. They’re extremely annoying and whenever I see “roaming” warriors I will go out of my way to destroy them because 99% of those people are running some sort of run away build. I will even let them use vengeance and try to chase me just so they can feel the annoyance of it.

ANet should really do something about those leap skills – but they wont. Instead they’ll just nerf everyone else.

Thesilentflute.8761:

Alchemist.3692:

LOL is someone from TC actually talking about strategy?

:D actually I play on blackgate and spent hours upon hours helping rise my server rise to number 1. Who do you think you are talking about TC players negatively what is it because they don’t have the bet “GvG” you joke. I call out people being stupid when they are doing it like now.

Oh blackgate, I’m sorry even worse. If you guys don’t have arrowcarts and ballistas your zergs don’t even fight. Sorry, thinking you were from TC was giving you more credit than you deserved. Btw, no one on BG does GvG – at least not against us. Your entire server was dodging us, even RISE wanted to only do a practice run and didn’t want to let us record it. I don’t really see what you’re complaining about then because your people don’t GvG. And your server does not employ any sense of the word “strategy”. Otherwise SoR wouldn’t be slapping you guys around, and even JQ held their ground against you guys fairly well despite losing a large amount of players.

You helped your server become #1 talentless ball of people running from one point to another aimlessly. Congrats, remind me to give you a cookie when I actually care.

Achilles.2197:

Pinko thinks 10-20 people spamming copy and paste builds in a deathmatch is gvg. Dont listen to him

lol this guy represents the server that ran into our GvG intentionally to wipe us with their “skilled” wvw-ers – repeatedly. I guess we copied and pasted our builds better than your guys… actually, it’s really sad when you lose to a copy/paste build since they are the easiest to counter.

Let me link you a video where your silly server thought their “talent” was better than the GvG scene. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ExVm0frra0&feature=youtu.be

The first wipe is after the first fight, and the second wipe is after the last fight around 10 mins in.

I can understand why you hate GvGers – you’re just not on our level. But that’s ok, one day you might be.

Thesilentflute.8761:

It is called Guild Wars 2 and you know who is winning the war the guilds on blackgate.

Lets pretend it isn’t kill trading.
The dumbing down and isolation of a game mode to fit your lv of understanding is a little ridiculous, but i get it now lol.

I will try my best to explain:

Without the towers keeps, and camps play would consist of one zerg running into another zerg. (like gvg)

STR A tegy allows smart people to win over larger enemy forces.

… that was way easier than I thought it would be.

LOL is someone from TC actually talking about strategy? Someone who thinks GvG doesn’t have any strategy in it is definitely a zerger who believes bigger numbers = better “STR A tegy” and thus makes them “smart”. I love when idiots publicly claim how much more intelligent than others they are, and go on to prove the exact opposite. If you can’t win with 20 people being occupied with playing the game the way THEY want to play it for half an hour – then just rage quit. QQ meta is long gone. Everyone paid to play the game the way they want – you wanna do it in a skill-less ball of people running into another skill-less ball of people – and others want to have something more organized. Either way if you don’t want us telling you how to play the game then kitten, stop crying and let us play it our way.

Talentless people always whine about things when they lose.

Trice.4598:

May I ask why we havn’t heard of [Deth] yet? They seems to be ranked #2 and soon to be #1 for NA ranking. I know the NA server arn’t as interesting GvG wise but I’d be nice to know our good guild.

I wouldn’t base the skill of a guild entirely on the rank. TW for example doesn’t even GvG anymore (they’ve dodged and declined to fight people for a while), but they’re still ranked 2nd. Deth has not faced any of the higher tier guilds (tier as in the place in the shuffling system to increase chances of facing certain servers). The rank system on gvg.com is sort of broken – but there’s no easy fix so we still gotta give credit to the guy putting in the hardwork and having that site up and running. Because most guilds in NA are not mobile (as in not moving from server to server to try and fight other groups) it’s very tough to say whether or not Deth deserves to be ranked third – let alone moving to first place. The opposite is also true though – just because Agg is ranked first atm doesn’t necessarily mean they are the #1 NA guild. Also, lets look at OS guild. They are ranked 4th but only have 2 matches played (1 against CNB who has a 75% loss ratio, and DDLG who is at 50% loss ratio). This is not exactly an accurate way to measure and rank a guild so logically we can discount their ranking in 4th place. Although unofficially we do know the top three NA guilds and currently they are Agg NS and most likely TW (despite being in hibernation).

Unless there is a ranking system similar to sPvP it’ll be very hard to say “officially” who is the top NA guild – and no offense to Deth, I’m sure they’re very talented but it’s a huge stretch to place them before the other three guilds mentioned above.

Contiguous.1345:

Nah.
An Ele isn’t a good solo. In fact there aren’t any good solo classes apart from thief.
Ele’s Not particularly good at anything else either – skill mechanics are too clumsy, far too many sub-par skills. D/D is survivable in melee (barely) useless at range. Staff is OK’sh (very slow) at range but helpless when closed.
Any sort of Ele is hopelessly vulnerable to CC.

I think Fadeaway got it right.

lol this is wrong on so many levels. There are fantastic solo classes other than thief available such as engis mesmers and surprise – eles. D/D eles with a strong build can move in and out of group fights very easily and do a lot of dmg and keep up a lot of pressure. Staff ele is a MUST for any group fight – ask those with talent such as top GvG guilds or WvW roaming guilds. They will never have a fight without a staff ele.

As far as eles being vulernable to CC you should go a duel a proper D/D ele – one of the hardest classes to deal with because of their sporadic movement.

I think you either have never played an ele; have never seen eles; or got roflstomped by them and now you’re hating. In sPvP they are a very strong contender for top tier dueling that they give mesmers and engis a run for their money. At the end of the day you will not find a 10+ composition without an ele in it.

What you should’ve said is that it’s just based on the talent of the ele. For ex Intigo from RG is amazing he has alot of group play and duels against very very good people. He fought one of the best mesmers we have Osicat and did ridiculously well – even Osicat said he has not had a problem with eles in a very long time until fighting him.

Retal is def a pain in the kitten … in fact I can stand behind a gate while enemy is attacking it and have around 40s of retal with 5 others and dps the gate (to hit rams and anyone close to it) eles, engis, and anyone else with aoe like rangers and whirl on guardian etc take a TON of dmg. I’ve collected a lot of bags from that actually. It’s very hard to deal with. While I would say it is pretty strong even after 50% nerf – I wouldn’t want it to go away either or be nerfed further to the point where it’s completely useless. At the same time though, while it sucks for an ele – firestorm is still pretty strong and I think this is a fantastic counter to it. Because lets be honest – there’s nothing we can really do against firestorm except try to move out of it but in group battle there’s always more than one coming down and even with 3500 Armor it does a lot of dmg.

Blob vs Blob isn’t really the issue. It’s when it’s blob vs 10 – that’s when there’s raging and QQ on the forums. As a member of a guild that regularly fights outnumbered, we can say that if we have 20 people and the other group has 30-35 it’ll be most likely in our favour simply because once people get used to blobing – when at lower numbers where tactics and things such as aoe heals matter the “blob” or even a smaller version of it forgets about this stuff and is essentially trying to tag whatever they can to get bags and exp.

It’s fun for our guild and several others like us, but for the guilds that are either more casual, fields less than 15 at a time, or even the pug groups of 10-20 fighting a blob is a real problem. Tactics are out the window and it’s just a free for all. Whoever can spam aoes and 1 the most will get the loots and wxp – unfortunately that’s just how it is. But don’t get me wrong we QQ anytime it’s 20 v 50 and then when that same group is fielding only 30 at the time they run away – and that is what’s so frustrating about blobbers. 0 backbone unless they can visibly see them outnumbering the other group. There are some instances where this isn’t true but 90%+ of blobbers will run away the closer it gets to even numbers. And unfortunately all of those runners are in t1 LOL. The tiers below – most people will actually come out and fight regardless (there are some runners but not as frequent).

SeNoZinD.9874:

I’m not the only one getting fps drops in wvw right? Mostly zerg on zerg battles? Normally my fps is around 40-60 normally but when theres a zerg fight it drops like skrillex drops the bass. It tends to then stay around at 13-20 fps. Am I the only one with this problem?

no this is normal. Because you need to render and process more models your GPU gets taxed. Also, having a good cpu and decent ram 8g+ will go a long way. You can always adjust the settings in graphics and reduce the quality and count of the models which will have a decent impact on your fps.

Straegen.2938:

Standard camps sure… but what classes given average player skill have great difficulty with upgraded camps?

Thief… lowest health pool, low armor. One scout and a cabalist will give you an extremely hard time unless you kite properly with sb and switching with either sword or dagger and pistol offhand. This is for average player skill. A highly skilled thief can solo upgraded camps very easily – it’s a double edged class with two extremes.

The easiest imo is ranger and necro (both condition spec), they have high health pools and great survivability against npcs. NPCs in groups, condition is the best way to fight because you can do massive aoe dmg – while burst is only good for one target. So by the time you get one down and work your way to others, they can potentially respawn. Again this is for the average player and not a skilled any class that can hit multiple targets and do a lot of dmg.

Archaeneoso.8461:

I ask because I am thinking of trying another class than my Mesmer. With it, using a great sword and staff it is pretty simple to solo the supply camp if you watch the action and use the bubble on archers.

What other classes solo the supply camp easily? All of them? Or can some not handle it?

In order, I would say condition rangers and necros, engis, eles, mesmers, thieves (as long as you dont get in over your head – good to open with dagger storm to take out the veteran scouts), warriors and guardians last.

lol this post is ridiculous… Who was the commander? And what guild are you from? Do you even have a screenshot/video of this happening. You’re saying it’s a problem for your guild, but which guild is that? And if you were actually serious you’d go to the DB forums and talk to the commanders that are there and give your opinion on how to do things. This looks like nothing more than a silly stunt from a troll.

GuardianOMS.8067:

Master of Timespace.2548:

Mesmers aren’t very viable as glass cannon zergers due to the popularity of perma stealth thieves.

This is not true. Life may be easier for you if you play a D/P or a perma stealth build but mesmers are still very strong and possible to play, especially against thieves.

agreed, when a thief gets 2 iduelists in the face each bullet critting for 2k+ and you usually can get atleast 10 hits on them before they stealth or dodge out – they’ll wish they never came out of stealth to attack lol!

King Amadaeus.8619:

HAHA so that’s where he ended up??? He was a fairly well-known troll on the lower tiers (Formerly of ET server)…Let us know if you guys ever see Marshall Bodkin there too, he was another one of my T8 fav trolls.

Marshal is the biggest troll ever… he was rocking the CNS tag on BG when i was still on the server about a month or so ago. That guy used to put up his tag and run rampantly all over the place, then claim he solo’d the map… god kitten annoying guy

Aberrant.6749:

Archon.6481:

XII.9401:

Not everyone enjoys being carried by their class -thieves/mesmers/guardians- and pretend it’s skill.

Oh please. Bad thieves/mesmers/guards will die in less than 10 seconds. Good ones however, take much longer.

Dude… lets be honest… even a bad guardian can last longer than 10 seconds. A guard would pretty much have to jump off a cliff to die before then. A bad thief/mes… I agree would die very fast though.

lol a bad any class other than necro (cuz of extra life bar) would die in 10s

peter.9024:

Real men roam warrior!

LOL you mean the warriors who spam leap skills to run away from a fight when they know they aren’t going to win?

Jado Cast.1805:

You know its bad when oPP and RIOT resort to taking towers so people will fight us. If there are any small roaming guilds left on SoR or DB, please come out and play.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=0pYjtj7zjO4

before calling out other servers you should really, really spend a moment to call out BG on their behaviour. As being in one of the known roaming guilds on DB, our server rarely plays this way… it seems our pugs picked up a lot from the seige hoarding and 40 v 1 fights BG and SoR throw out. Actually, as soon as I get some time I should upload BG & SoR running away from us (10-15 v 20+) while we were tormenting you guys inside bay on SoR BL. More interestingly, BG could have gone north to take some SoR towers while they were occupied with us (and rightly so) but instead insisted on taking DB tower because they were too scared to run north incase SoR outmanned/classed them. Not that losing that one tower made a difference – out of the three servers, DB cares the least for PPT at this point if it wasn’t obvious enough by the score.

On the other hand though, SoR has far more backbone in jumping into fights than BG does. It seems if your server doesn’t have arrow carts or siginificant numbers you ppl just don’t bother coming out to play.

Don’t complain if a few of our guys are frustrated by the steam rolling and would rather wait inside a tower since it’s safer than roaming for most of them.

On the other hand you will see NS, qT, EAT, rB frequently roaming – it might just be your timezone that you don’t catch us, but do let us know when your guild will be on and in which bl and we’ll be sure to stop by and say hi.

With magic find being turned into an account stat obtained through achievements, what will happen to the magic find gear people have spent quite a bit on – along with ascended items that have magic find?

Will it just be changed into another stat or something? Anyone know if any devs have mentioned what will happen to the equipment?

Is this in effect immediately? I just tried shadow strike – and it did not apply any torment

Bethryn.4087:

When you see Black Powder go down, maybe you should try standing inside it so that they can’t HS without hitting you, which, amazingly enough, breaks their stealth and gives them Revealed.

this is not true.. HS can land and still stealth – ive had it happen and done it myself many times. It’s one of the benefits. What you need to understand though is that BP + HS takes a lot of initiative for only a couple seconds of stealth and is not really the best thing to use, unless you have some plan. It’s only useful against classes like warriors and guardians who can drop lots of dps very quickly if they catch you – so often you BP + dps, then heartseeker before the field goes away.

Only way to reveal BP + HS is if blinding powder triggers (at low hp and the thief doesn’t realize) and the bullet from BP hits or HS hits, then it’s a reveal. Otherwise without interrupts or the thief screwing up you can’t get reveal on it. It’s pretty strong I admit, but it comes at a huge cost in terms of initiative. Every class has very strong ways to beat thieves.

What is op now though, is a condition thief with torment. Only classes with regular condition cleansing or high hp can deal with them. The venoms can be really troublesome and traited to be applied twice every 30s. Add stealth to it and it’s very tough to counter. Burst thieves should not be bothering anyone at this stage in the game unless it’s your second month tho imo

So about 5 of us were at another server’s garri – we got to the inner gate (down to 50% before their zerg came at us) so we requested help from the pin. Now, it took some time and the pin was swimming underwater for a while so we thought he/she was doing the quaggan nodes instead of helping us at watergate.

Little did we know – this person did not know WHERE watergate was and had at least 20-25 people following them and instead of asking right away, he/she just kept trying on their own (and the embarrassment of asking can be understood). While in this particular instance it didn’t matter because we were up against servers who couldn’t match our coverage – but when we do get matched up against those with the same or better coverage it will pose a problem.

Anet really needs to do something about the 100g requirement for commanders. This person was basically doing PVE since launch and decided they since they had the gold they would go and buy a commander tag – then realized it was useless for PVE so they jumped into WvW with it.

Maybe ANet should have some sort of requirement like badges + gold or hours in WvW + something else. This is just ridiculous and has lead to a lot of frustration when trying to coordinate with people who have no idea what’s going on but has a large group following them.

The name was blacked out for sake of anonymity. I don’t want to put anyone down – I blame ANet for this entirely and no one else. I’m not against people being new to certain parts of the game – but it’s ridiculous to lead a group of people with you in to oblivion.

ProxyDamage.9826:

Warriors got a much needed buff yes. They are far from “immune to conditions”.

That said, from your post history you seem to be a Thief player. If you’re playing a Thief and ANY other class outruns you you suck, plain and simple. Since the ele d/d nerf, no class comes close to the Thief’s mobility.

I know no one ever managed to get away from mine. Beat me? Sure, when they play better, but run away? No. Just no.

Ok, no… warriors have some of the best escape abilities. They can take hits and trait for chills immob etc… plenty of leap skills, swiftness, and movement skills that break stuns/immob, stability, shield, and take no pain, make them very hard to catch…it’s ridiculous. I have an easier time catching eles (with the rtl nerf) now than warriors and it’s not because of a lack of skill… they are just very good at running away.

Any solution to the Error Attempting to Sell problem? If you sell more than 4-5 different items at a time (since launch) you get this error and have to wait, then try again with reduced amount this time (1-2 items), till eventually you rage and just leave it for another time.

this is annoying especially because people tend to farm several different items/mats and then sell them all at once instead of listing every single individual item as you get it.

What is the problem (in the background)? And why has this issue since launch (and probably the Beta Testing) not been resolved yet?

edit: it took me about half an hour to list 20-25 different mats – when it should’ve only taken a couple minutes.

I know this isn’t the first time, and I’m aware that you guys are aware this has been an issue from launch – but why is it that if you sell more than 5 different items at a time you get some nonsense error trying to sell on the black lion tradepost and you have to wait a while before selling again otherwise you just continue getting the errors.

If someone could explain why this error is coming up, and why it hasn’t been fixed I’m sure it would be appreciated by many people.

thief dagger/dagger build is a bit more bearable despite the higher burst vs d/p spec. I think the main issue is the amount of survivability a d/p thief has… I’ve trolled 10+ easily with it but I find d/d to be more skill based because you actually have to hit something (npc animals and clones/pets are excellent for this) to stealth from it. D/P on the other hand you can just stealth all day long without even having to use your utils. I main a mesmer, but after playing thief I can see why they have to be the way they are.

Low health pool and very easily dmg’d by conditions make it hard to fight without stealth.

My recommendation for OP is use staff until you get an opening to burst with sword and shatter. Usually you have to have the right utils to fight a thief and it’s hard to respec on the fly incase you run into them.

oh and the stealth traps will help as well you should give those a shot.

the only battle i saw with some merit was the one outside hills… the rest you guys had the keeps to support you which even at a 2:1 ratio still gives you an advantage… do you guys have any open field combat vids? I don’t think we’ve ever faced deth when SF was in t8

Thanks for all your feedback guys! Going to discuss it with the guild and see what else everyone has come up with. At this point I’m narrowing it down to SoS and JQ… desolation sounds good because of the time zone difference but I dunno about the rest of the guild.

I can already say though, that a few very talented players are heading to SoS and DB from our server (not from my guild though)… there’s also been talk about EB. lol chances are this whole this is going to split the guild apart

Le Rooster.8715:

I would also have to add, if your guild runs numbers less then 30 NA or 20 oceanic/SEA/EU don’t go to any t1 server, they run in much larger zergs where running with anything less than 30 becomes obselete and you would have to run with multiple zergs.

So it depends on what you guys like,

does your guild like to roam?
does your guild like to open field fight?
does your guild like to run as guild groups?

let us know more about what you want.

We primarily roam, and get into as many fights as possible… we don’t really care about the numbers but it does get a little tiresome after 10 back to back steam rolls of 3 vs 30 lol. We have some of the best duelists on our server (Sorrows Furnace) esp now that some guys from KING left. We don’t mind the occasional zerg because we take our best mesmers and thieves to grab attention and split larger groups and pick off the stragglers while our tanks take the brunt of the force so we can go unnoticed.

so smaller skirmishes are usually where we excel… when it gets 30 vs 30 typically we just go off and do another objective since it’ll be aoe spamming all over the place.

Oh, and tiers don’t really matter either (though I’d rather not go below t6 where we’re currently at)

Hello,

I’m looking to switch servers, and most likely the guild I’m in will follow. We’re primarily US time zones, so I’m trying to find out queue times in a few servers that have already been recommended.

BG
SoS
DB
MAG
FA

I’m not particularly interested in a “winning” server (whatever that may mean) but somewhere that people are not scared to fight even if they’re outnumbered. We’re fairly skilled players, but we’re looking to learn more and definitely improve our abilities in small squads and larger battles of course. So a big thing for us would be to go to a place that has a lot to teach us and individual players (or 1/x’s) would be challenging to face against as well. Currently unless it’s 7+ vs 1 it’s rare that our guys lose – but again it’s not that we’re that special, but our opponents are lacking (lots of up levels or very bad management of skills and cds).

Any feedback would be greatly appreciated!

Phoenixfudge.5290:

p/d thief. that is all.

this…

ultimate survivability.

I think maybe the problem is that there’s a population imbalance in wvw. One side will have double the population. It’s not really an issue with zerging itself but he’s probably more concerned about why his 10 man group has to get steam rolled by a 50 man blob lol.

Unfortunately though, the only way to do anything about that is to punish the server that CAN get more people on. I personally don’t see a solution to wvw pop imbalance and that’s just how it is. You can’t really penalize people for wanting to wvw just to make up for those who choose not to for whatever reason. You could bring incentives in WvW (wexp didn’t really do anything) but still, I feel pve-ers will remain where they’re most comfortable

Mystery Tonic – It’s the only way to roam

Kicast.1459:

Dear Arenanet and thief community,
Me as a mesmer feel lost while roaming alone or in group once me and my teamates encounter a perma stealthed thief.
What can I do against a perma stealthed thief ?
I have been reading plenty of Arenanet dev claiming that we have to learn to play against this profession.
I am on the top EU server since beginning. Me and my teamates still do not understand.
Do you feel perma stealth against a 10 men group is not broken ?
What are the counter ?
Now that mesmer are not valuable anymore in zergs whith confusion / time warp nerfs…what can mesmer do while roaming and being chained agressed by untuchable thief ?
Ignore him ? What if the thief does not ignore me ?
Is thief the only class able to roam without risk at all ?
Thanks for your help.

My main is a mesmer. Best way to deal with perma stealth thieves are immob and chills if you can keep him in one spot for 2-3s even if you cant see him 10 ppl will drop a thief in an instant. I can solo most perma stealth thieves with my mesmer but it isn’t easy. The best thing to use imo is staff and sword focus. If they use their shadow refuge then just focus pull them out and they’ll have reveal debuff plus cd on sf now.. at that point simple iwarden, ileap and then blurred frenzy into shatter usually will kill them. Even when traited a thief’s max hp is generally around 16k and that usually means sacrificing armor or power. You should be ok to deal with them. Play a thief for a while at level 80 and you’ll understand

i think 34k is over the top. even with 100% crit dmg bonus i don’t think anything over 20-25k in a single combo is worth even discussing. Thiefs and warriors are supposed to output the most dmg by design. If you somehow stack 25 might, it’s possible but the only time i’ve had that is in group fights with at least 2 staff guardians, and even then timing the might stacks with the combo can be hard unless your guardians coordinate and do it right at the start.

Someone on the forums once argued that because ANet has “professionals” they know what they’re doing.. well that hope that kitten is getting his kitten handed to him by acs. God knows unless darkhaven is zerging, they have 4 ppl in hiding in a tower spaming their acs all day long.

this patch has ruined a lot of things.

Ross Biddle.2367:

Alchemist.3692:

in wvw the two main features retal and confusion are 50% effective. while it’s great for pve, I don’t know how it’ll do against live players. Esp since confusion has the lowest duration and now each stack does around 150 dmg as opposed to the 300 it did with around 1000 cd dmg. I’d like to see any wvw videos you have… otherwise looks like a decent build.

Also, I’ve noticed you have 20% might + 30% boon, which would make might 50% longer. Why not just go for 50% boon? It’ll increase the duration on everything, including the retaliation.

I understand the changes to confusion (I’ve only played a mesmer since launch, and been playing confusion with this setup all that time). With confusion nerfed this build does lack that burst needed for bunkers. But on the upside I never go down myself in those situations.

It’s 20% boon duration from Chaos, 30% from water and monk runes, then an additional 20% to might from pirate (can also go strength for power, but I like the magic find). So that’s 50% boon duration with 70% total might duration.

It’s not much. Just a 30 second clip I grabbed tonight. I came across this greatsword ranger trying to solo a camp. He was some sort of bunker build I haven’t faced before so I had some scrapes while I got used to his thing. In the end neither of us could down the other (he had massive maneuverability and was running movement speed increase food to boot). The upshot was I got a full 30 seconds of “in my face” fighting, so you can see the numbers as they add up. Sadly I didn’t have my food running.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nf8G8SJ27I&feature=youtu.be
I’ll get some better stuff tomorrow.

looks pretty good numbers wise. i’m looking forward to more videos, sounds like an interesting build.

theCOREYCOLAK.5698:

No decoy? Are you wishing a quick and easy death?

decoy is not mandatory. and isn’t the reason why you’ll win a fight.

I agree. I wish these guys would do something about our illusions failing so often. I can’t count the number of times I’ve felt completely useless trying to seige a tower because no matter which weapon i use, every skill except chaos storm comes up as obstructed.

Ever since ANet put up that LOS nonsense, it’s really screwed up a lot of our abilities. And yet, they’ve done nothing to fix it.

Have the devs completely ignored this thing? It has a decent purpose but if it gets one shotted by an auto attack it’s pretty useless. Even normal clones last longer, I don’t see how this can be of any use if it’s getting hit so hard that it dies before it does what it needs to do. Also the condition removal doesnt even work half the time, even if you are in range of it.

I wonder if the devs would like to maybe revisit the mesmer for something other than nerfs.

roachsrealm.9284:

Thanks for the reply.

As far as traits go, looking at the options I’m not sure which staff CD trait you are referring to.
For Inspiration I’m assuming you are using increased illusion health and warden’s feedback when you trait to 20 in that line, right?
In chaos the extra toughness trait with the staff is a no-brainer, but what else are you using? I don’t see the grandmaster trait options really viable here, since you aren’t cloaking or regularly interrupting.
Do you use the desperate decoy in the Dueling trait line? I don’t see the extra criticals as useful overall with a power increase instead. If you go 10 into Domination you can get the signet recharge reduction trait, which seems like it’d go well with boon copying in this set up. That way you can throw the extra 5 into Inspiration and have your long lasting phantasms doing more damage.

Thoughts?

Also: How are you getting your boon duration so high?

Trait X in chaos which gives extra toughness also reduces the cd on staff skills. As for grandmaster trait, just pick whatever you want. I usually take the extra cloaking if i need to heal or mass invis group to get them through a specific part of a dungeon (such as arah, there’s a lot of running past annoying mobs). And if they dont make the run (such as arah) then you can repeatedly pop invis in this order so that reveal debuff doesnt hit you Mass invis→decoy→prestige (which is a torch skill). Decoy is different from mass invis and prestige so the reveal bs wont proc as long as you dont attack. The point here is so you can make it to a safe point and drop a portal, take the nearest wp back and portal everyone through (though you have to keep in mind portal range so placement is everything).

30 in chaos gives you 30% boon duration plus runes for an extra 40% giving you a total of 70%. You could use signet of midnight for another 10%. But i rarely use signet of midnight.

As for inspiration i use mender’s purity and warden’s feedback. sometimes I don’t trait the full 20 and only do 15 cuz I don’t need the focus skills.

Do you use the desperate decoy in the Dueling trait line? I don’t see the extra criticals as useful overall with a power increase instead. If you go 10 into Domination you can get the signet recharge reduction trait, which seems like it’d go well with boon copying in this set up. That way you can throw the extra 5 into Inspiration and have your long lasting phantasms doing more damage.

as far as this goes it depends on your build. My build has 97% crit dmg bonus with 70% crit chance – so at 3000 attack, I technically have almost 6k attack 70% of the time which is very important in taking down adds in FOTM and other dungeons because you practically get one shotted most of the time. However, if you don’t run the extra crit dmg then i would skip the signet recharge and use illusions do 15% more dmg and then drop that extra 5 in inspiration so now phantasms are doing an extra 30% overall. That would be a very very strong support build since phantams are giving regen and protection, plus you get more boons and share them with everyone at 70%+ boon duration, and you have a fairly reasonable amount of dps. I can see iWarden (staff 3 attack) doing around 3-4k consistently with a build like this.

Of course your trinkets play a big role as well so don’t completely disregard them. they’re just as important as your armor

in wvw the two main features retal and confusion are 50% effective. while it’s great for pve, I don’t know how it’ll do against live players. Esp since confusion has the lowest duration and now each stack does around 150 dmg as opposed to the 300 it did with around 1000 cd dmg. I’d like to see any wvw videos you have… otherwise looks like a decent build.

Also, I’ve noticed you have 20% might + 30% boon, which would make might 50% longer. Why not just go for 50% boon? It’ll increase the duration on everything, including the retaliation.

You should be able to see shatter dmg, but I believe illusion dmg was never added to the combat log. You’ll see individual numbers for the shatters per clone but I’ve never actually stopped to check if illusion dmgs come up. This is a good question, and very important since iZerker seems to have been ninja nerfed, but the defs insist that “it’s working fine, it’s just not popping up the correct amount of dmg for you to see overhead – but it is hitting as intended” .

ANet loves to swing the nerf bat, but when it comes to fixing things for the mesmer they don’t give a kitten 25th trait point in dueling which has all illusions stack confusion when killed only works on clones and they have never bothered to address it.

I wouldn’t hold my breath

KinkyGiraffe.4123:

If you guys didnt notice last week

Sorrows Furnace = 1 204.430
Isle of Janthir = 1 202.412
^^^^^^^
Look at the difference of our rating points after last week, if DH the kittens didnt attack us so hard the night before reset, our strong push would have kept us blue for another week, youd have to be dreaming if you think we’re not going to focus SF more than DH, we’ll be blue next week and theres nothing you, or that KING guild can do about it <3

lol plz you wouldn’t have stayed blue, dont kid yourself. Even if you guys and DH barely looked at each other. It’s very obvious, so don’t try and deny it… when you open the map you can clearly see both IoJ and DH attacking our stuff but completely ignoring each other’s. And, we didn’t even have SM for too long so don’t bring that up cuz that’s just silly.

Just admit that neither of you guys can take SF without helping each other out. Once again, just got off our bl with both IoJ and DH zergs. EB was the same story. Now I’m not saying don’t attack us, but if you’re going to go through the trouble of running all the way across the map and ignore the unmanned DH towers on your way then there’s really nothing for me to say.

If it was just IoJ vs SF you guys wouldn’t last and would get steam rolled hard. Our only real problem is DH where they have multiple zergs of 30+ hitting two towers at once. I’ve also seen some nice tactics from DH. IoJ on the other hand.. well there’s not much to say there.

Good luck, you’ll need it.

MystGun.8249:

And just as a follow up question, if Mesmers have weaknesses what are they?? Outside of conditions is there another way to kill the Mesmer?

lol most people can’t spot the obvious ileap. a mesmer stands there and points right at you, and suddenly something comes dashing toward you… you should be dodging it not trying to tank it. The way to kill a mesmer is to pay attention. The tricks are cheap imo, if you run around in circles the clones will follow you and the real one most likely will not lol. It’s so easy to tell apart that the only reason i’ve been beaten by another mesmer is because he/she was just that much better than me, and not because of the clones. They time the shatters, and distortions properly. They know when to use which skills to maximize benefits, and how to get out of tough situations. A mesmer’s real strength instead in their clones itself (because they’re meant to be shattered), it’s more in utilizing the various ways to attack to keep opponents guessing. This is a highly technical profession (unlike thieves that just stealth, burst, repeat), and it requires you to manage your cds very, very well because no matter what anyone says our utils in particular have very long cds.

The only way, in short to win against a mesmer is to pay attention. And that’s all. It’s an L2P problem not a ZOMG NERF THIS CLASS.

low level mesmers esp below level 40 have a very tough time… very low power, armor, and hp. As you go beyond level 40 – esp 60+ that’s when mesmers begin to show their worth. A fully spec’d level 80 mesmer is considered one of the most powerful professions – if not the most powerful profession in the game. And no thieves don’t count because stealth in to 10k burst, then hs spam, then stealth again doesn’t really count as any amount of skill. Mesmers are a very technical profession and mistakes can sometimes be very unforgiving unlike other classes.

My fractal setup is different from my dungeon ones. In fractals i run 0/20/30/15/5 or 0/15/30/20/5 since I wont be shattering often the 15 in inspiration gives me and everyone regen near my phantasms plus in chaos i get protection everytime i gain regen (10s cd) and the staff cd trait is great. I always run staff and depending on the encounter i switch between sword/focus (especially traiting in inspiration for focus to reflect projectiles) or gs when it’s some place that I know I’ll be doing a lot more ranged fighting like the ice elemental fractal. I also use blink null field and signet of inspiration along with tw, and occasionally switch out null field for portal if it’ll be useful.

The reason I do that is that I have 80% boon duration so i usually jump right in to a mob or boss fight drop chaos storm under me with chaos armor take a few hits to proc a lot of regen (30s+) protection retal etc and then pop signet of inspiration to give it to everyone else. In less than 10s I have every boon in the game (except stability) with 80% boon duration passed on to everyone. The cd is not that bad – the staff skills come back quickly (a few seconds before your signet) and you can choose to rinse and repeat or just drop the chaos storm on top of your team and usually there will be a blast finisher by someone else to proc chaos storm for everyone.

Also I use arcane thievery if I know it’s a boss that’ll have buffs like the jellyfish underwater. He stacks 25 might i’ll rip it and then pop signet of inspiration and now 5 ppl have 25 stacks of might! lol it’s pretty useful. Especially against the dredge who proc boons, give them a few seconds to stack their boon duration on might protection and regen (usually 10s+) and do the same thing there.

Equipment is all zerker but chest piece is knight’s. Trinkets are mix of zerker and knights just because conditions (particularly confusion) I don’t find does too much as a mesmer in dungeons and should be reserved for necros more. Dps tends to hurt bosses more than confusion since they dont attack very frequently.

Overall I think one of the very best if not the best class in a dungeon is a mesmer because they can buff and tank as well as a guardian, dps almost as good as a warrior, and remove conditions pretty well.