Guild Wars 2

-Leave out any gear progression/gating. Both for starting it and for progress trough.
-Leave out the extra grindy requirements (storymodes+gifts+blablabla) – they’re not hard or gating skilled/unskilled, they’re just extra grind. A enter fee (in different forms) is enough.
-More players =/= difficulty increase. Especially in GW2, where more than 5/10 player is just a particle effect mess. 5 man seems enough to me already – but i wouldn’t get over 8-12 players anyway, if you really want more ppl.

This are my main concerns.

There is a issue tho – not related to your suggestion.

First: makes little sense adding more istance content whenn current one is ignored/broken, has huge reward/effort ration unbalance, and meta DPS > all.
Second: as long as the said “DPS > all” thing remains, you’ll just end up with more ppl hitting more stuff or stuff with more hp.
Support needs to become meaningful. Control and it’s interaction with bosses (aka: defiant) needs a revamp. DPS must not be anymore the “i win” for pve before starting any new istance/raid project – especially if involves more than current 5 ppl.

Lower the siege cap for AC.
Problem solved.

The real issue is not range or dmg (even if they’re part of the equation. supply/solver/badge cost too).
It’s that with current range and radius upgrades you can make up to 10ish AC overlap and hit the same area (namely, around the gate of hills).
THAT makes the whole thing kittened.
1 Superior AC hitting for 1k 50 players? It’s ok.
10 Ac is 10k/sec. On same 50 players. That’s the issue.

First fix the rest of the game.
What’s the point of adding more instance content when current ones are in such shape?
Boring meta and mechanics, uninteresting encounters, bugs, rewards unbalance (and lack of thereof), and much more.

And that’s talking about DGs only.

Also, take care HOW you’ll do it (if it’s true).
Fow/UW/Urgoz/Deep/DoA/Slavers should be your inspirations.
Not WoW or any other clone: do the GW1 style things.
And keep any gear stat progress out of it.

Full the Bank slots. Full the Char slots. Full the inventory bag slots on Chars. Buy a bulk of Fine Tstone (always handy). Buy a couple of total makeover/name change kit that in need.
Save the rest for future releases.

Female Mesmer armor were brilliant, from the very first one at lvl 1 to the Obsidian one.

Just saying, now you’re just giving the impression of non-accepting criticism… it’s a 2-page long thread where the whole Mesmer community is explaining you why this build is bad, yet you don’t (or do not want to) see the arguments.

Also:

The reason i’ve made this build is because i have over ~ 800 fractals done and i have yet to see a mesmer that was useful. I may call me arrogant or delusional, but trust me… i am neither. I have seen hundreds of mesmers that all seem to share the same… fate.
I look at mesmers, they run around… they put some feedback, then they drop dead…
At lvl 48 fractals… i dodge out of a mob’s way, fear him to heal… mesmer takes agro… i look as the mob’s HP barely moves… then he hits the mesmer, mesmer goes splat.

Nemesis.8593:

The reason i made this build, the reason i branched out into other classes… mesmer for a change. Is because i’ve had only bad experiences with mesmers in PvE, in high level fractals.

I recall this one event that made me think… “that’s it… mesmer is next”.
-snip-
Then i thought to myself… next time i find a shatter mesmer in my high lvl fractal group, i am going to flail him. Then i thought… how come mesmers do so little damage and are so god kitten squishy… Then i thought… maybe they can do high damage, but they didn’t knew how. Mesmer… that’s what i will go over next…

This DO makes you look arrogant. A lot.

And:

-don’t like situational stuff.

You have said so many good things about your build, but that’s like… not just one build. If you switch traits and weapon and utility… that’s another build entirely, if we were playing a game i would say you are cheating.

What? Changing parts of the build on the fly to adapt to encounters and situations is one of the few things left in this game to divide bad/average and skilled/good player.

Are you so tunnel-visioned that can’t think about change up things to perform better for a certain part of content? Or do you really think exists a build to “rule the pve all” w/o even need of touching any part of it from a boss to another?
I’m..i’m…baffled, to say the least.

Again, not meaning to be harsh or personal attack, but this is getting a bit ridicolous…

Mist Y.5214:

Sounds like there are a couple of things you didn’t realise:
1. applying boons is affected by the AoE limit of 5, so no, the whole group doesn’t get that swiftness
2. Symbol of Swiftness only applies swiftness to you if you don’t already have swiftness, so it does nothing if you just stacked 60s of it
3. Rune of the Centaur has an internal cooldown

1. true, but with every player that blast in the field can apply the boon to 5 different allies (first of all to himself). It’s random, sure, but 20-30 man zergs can easily get all 1m+ swiftness, as long as enough different players blast the field. Same goes for water and fire combos.
2.wrong, that’s Temporal Curtain. Symbol of Swiftness it’s a bit wonky (happens to do not receive boon while running over because it apply swiftness pulsing) but it DO stack.
3.again, it’s matter of numbers. 1 single player can’t apply swiftness to whole zerg. but if you have 5-10 ppl with that runeset, then things gets more interesting.
(btw, centaur set is used manly by mesmers who have very little OOC swiftness, and usually you shouldn’t need more that 3-5 mes in a 20-30 zerg…so it’s a bit unrealistic scenario)

Aaaaand another +1 to Pyroatheist. Stop reading my mind and being able to explaing in a decent shape what i think. :p

Dub.1273:

Rather Crowd Control.

+1

/15charrs

Atrophied.8725:

WTB flat-chested plate armor for females.

There are some.

AC and CM iirc, for example, are quite flat.

WyldKat.4712:

And what happens if two people try to summon this at the same time?

Caladbolg + Caladbolg = magic combo, Trahearne appears.

Kills (of boredom) every allies in the area.

Just saying, it do is better to run less sized groups when facing a blob.

Attack 3 locations at same time, they won’t be able to defend all decently.

The issue is that working this way instead of zoneblobbing following a blue tag requires much more effort from all the players on the field involved.

Nemesis.8593:

This is a glass cannon, it does well enough what it has to do.

No. Glass cannon is something that has a sense only if the dmg output is really cannon. Like warriors: ppl want them in glass cannon setup because their dmg is enough to make ppl forget that they’re totally depening on their own dodges and 1-2 party members support/protection to survive.
In this build you give up for utility and support for dmg… but the dmg gained is simply not enough to balance out the versatility loss.

Nemesis.8593:

In the build you have linked me, you lose 100 power and 10% condition duration and 5% extra damage vs inactive foes and a bit of stun/more mantra power….

Here is where the logic in building (that you apply to nec and works) fails.
Mesmer do not allocate trait points for stats. They do it for functionalities.
Most mesmer dps pve builds go 20-25 pts in Inspiration. They do it for 200/250 Vit and boon duration? NO. they do it for extra 15% phant dmg. for focus gaining reflect ability. For glam recharge or vigor spread on shatter.

Pyroatheist.9031:

I believe someone else put it well: I’m sure you’re a great necro, but you have a lot to learn about Mesmer. You’ve made 2 ‘builds’ posted here in the forums so far, and they’ve both been abysmal, demonstrating characteristics that would work on a necro but simple fail on a Mesmer. In my opinion, you need to actually play your Mesmer more, figure out what it actually does, then get back to us.

+1.

For how they made wvw, they should have made all servers international US+EU to make it work for real.

Sadly, the chance is gone.

Glam in WvW.
Phant in PvE (DG. Might think on Shatter for Open wordl/Events).
Don’t do sPvP, but i guess Shatter is your best bet atm there. Phant is a viable choice too, especially for 1vs1.

aelska.4609:

Mmmh, I don’t really agree with you, SFR. When I roam with a 5 people group, I use to see your all 40+ zerg pursuing us through your tier (on EB),

Halt.

Eb is a different story about blobbing and monozerging, compared to Bls.

Actually, on EB blobbing is the right tactic in certain moments, because you have to “punish” as hard as possible a server trying to breach in your third of map (usually with their zoneblob), to make him turn against the 3rd faction (especially if the 3rd faction is the SM holder).

Anyway, point is that all the unblob/roaming thing is referred manly (not only. manly.) to Bl’s, where guilds are more likely to play. Less blob, less random ppl, less lag.

Eb is apart, so don’t take it as example in talking about who is blobbing and how much.

(ninjia’ed)

Nemesis, i feel a bit bad to say this but:
copy pasting nec’s way of building do not work with mes.
Hybrid too, had same split of stats as nec hyrbid, with small (not) difference that mes condition dmg is plain useless, when nec’s is optimal in splitting in power/cond dmg his dps. same here, trowing 30 pts in power and prec lines is NOT the way to build for optimal dps on mes. the final 10 pts traits on both lines are complete trash. mantras don’t make any sense.
Stop it.

(didn’t mean to be harsh)

-it’s been know farming spotsince SSC update brought in MF free buff.
-you are extremely lucky or downright trolling. me and half of my guild spent like one week straight farming this spot. somebody was able to make up to 30-40ish T6 scale/hr plus crates and rares/exotic. Somebody (read: me) about 3-4 t6 scales and a bunch of grey crap in same timespan. RGN. but 100/day is plain unrealistic.
-it’s going to die as soon as MF npc disappear…so in abour 30 hrs afaik.
-get ready for scale/blood/claw/fang prices bump.

in other words: nothing to see here, move on.

Leorcyn.1063:

Haha !
As if SFR is remotely close to what it was.

Same for VS.

At least at that time you had some ppl and guilds able to stand out the crowd for skill (WL for example).

Now it’s all just a faceless, AC lover, fair open field fights runaway blob.

I’t sad. Effective for winning, but really sad.

What Paulytnz said (and the list of needed fixes could easily be 3 times long).

On the other hand, i’d like them to stop wasting time and resources on temporary stuff (festive events, whole FF package and now a lot of SSC things) that drains their efforts but do not remains in game.

Orbs have more raw stat increase, compared to runes.
This is balanced out by the runes N° 2, 4 and 6 bonuses that are usually more interesting than a simple stat boost.

For example, runes of air (crit dmg boost) do not offers nearly as much stats as ruby orbs (a mere 10% crit dmg vs. 120 power, 80 prec and 12% crit dmg). But 2nd buff extend swiftness, 4th make my heal proccing it and 6th is a quite hard hitting lighting strike.

Everywhere SFR goes, stuff get interesting… look, latest 2-3 weeks long thread of T1 was a couple of pages long, such a shame. Not a single troll/flame/poke/meme. Disappoint.

What would you do without us!

Fixed a bug where portal entre and exteunt where both purple.
Now they properly display Yellow and Blue colors.

I lol’ed kitten that post, bright.

+1

(censorship on h a r d word, ok anet. /gonnamakeabugreportthreadwhichwillhavedevresponse)

Another thing i’d add in.

Restrict the rolls of stages to even the time spent.

I mean:
-set 3 tiers of stage lenght. ex: dredge and cliff side are longest ones. swamp and underwater shorter. ascalon mid.
-every fractal run will now be composed by 3 stages, one picked off each of these categories.

What does it mean:
-no more incredibly fast runs (swamp/underwater/ascalon)
but
-no more endlessy frustrating rolls (dredge/grawl/cliffside)

Being every run made of 1Short/1Med/1Long stages, you keep up the random roll on challenge (stages are divided on lenght not difficulty) and bosses/mechanics, but at least you’ll have an average “estimated time” instead of a daily fractal run taking anywhere from 30 mins to 2hrs.

fishergrip.4082:

Just wait for when a Tier 1 server randomly drops to tier 4.

In EU, JS (2nd-3rd server in ladder) has just been randomly kicked in T3.

Interrupt traits are garbage. Change them or change up some skills/combat mechanics to make interrupting foes a proper spec.
Confusion traits (spreaded everywhere and a lot of them are Minor ones), due to confusion being useless in wvw/spvp (half dmg) and pve (proc once every blue moon), are now very supbar. Confusion balance shoud be revised, or these traits changed up.

Finally, some grandmaster traits are really bad for the investiment needed.

LB is 900 range because the niche of 1200 range weapon is already filled by Rifle.

Now, wouild make surely sense merging traits to make LB trait like other weapon ones – think about hammer and gs, have a cd reduction + additional effect – so might be:

LB Mastery: Cd reduction of 20%, range extended to 1200 units.

Scrap altogheter the other trait.

juno.1840:

How is this wrong?

Check the ranged options of scepter, GS, and staff, and maybe pistol. For a flat-out power build, GS is the highest sustained damage at range.

At which range?

(not a irrilevant question.)

Vs somewhat expected, but Kodash bumped up in T1 with us.. made think just

http://cdn.memegenerator.net/instances/400x/37896880.jpg

Asurmir.7956:

Chill affects our class mechanic, and, hopefully, it affects the other classes as well (their mechanic, not the weapon swap). Really, I’ve been wondering if chill affects the thief initiative regen since they are resource dependent.

Doubt about initiative (it’s not a “skill”), but might affect Steal CD tho.
And Burst skills.
And Shatters.
And DS.
And virtues.
And Pets F2.
And Toolbelt skills.

It would make sense.

marnick.4305:

I would take the one I do fractals with

This.

Ascended items are needed in only 1 place of whole GW2: Fractal.

Everywhere else, they’re not required at all.

Welcomed to push a lil higher your stats in wvw/pve? Sure.
But everything is still designed around Exotics power level.

There’s just one thing that i’d like to ask you (by “you”, don’t mean poster above, it’s plural).

You keep saying that prices are going to be on par with most efficent farm in the game.
Which is CoF P1.
If i had a crystalline dust for everytime i’ve read in this forums “in 1h i can do X gold in cof, in 1h i can do 5 dust so price will rise until dust will be worth X/5” i’d have 2 bifrosts.
Now.
Following this reasoning…. what will happen when CoF p1 will be deleted from game, nerfed to the ground or brought down to the ratio of reward of other dungeons? (which is 2 to 5 times less, and maybe even more when perceived from players, due to other dgs requiring bigger effort to complete comapred to cof)

Do you expect really ppl to say “best farm in game now nets half of X (which was cof p1 gold gain), so all mats prices must halve to adapt to it”?
No.
Because what’s driving up prices is not (only) the sheer gold avaibility and superior farming due to CoF.
It’s the supply nosediving.
(and it’s nosediving why? because, between some glitch/bug fixes which were being exploited – and fixing those is a must – anet kept sneaking some direct farming nerfs. ask Plinx of tunnel events in CS…and to some mobs loot tables.)
And as long as there isn’t a direct intervention by Anet on it, we can make farming dust the most profitable thing in the game, but prices will just keep rising.

Nor.2057:

Pyroatheist.9031:

No. Harmonious mantras lowers your heal/second from restorative mantras.

why would that happen specifically? i mean having 3 charges per cast wouldn’t give you more heals than 2 charges per cast?

No, because the heal of restorative mantras is fired off every time you complete a mantra CHANNEL.
Supposing you’re spamming mantra of pain no stop (1 sec cd for istacast and for channeling again):

2.75 sec channel
get heal
use istantcast
1 sec CD
use istantcast
1 sec CD
can channel again -> heal

Rinse and repeat.

If you take Harmonious Mantra, you must fire the istantcast one additional time, which means the “cooldown” between the heals of restorative mantra related to mop have 1 additional sec of CD.

That’s why harmonious mantras and restorative mantras aren’t taken both at same time.
/edit: ninjia’ed :p

PinCushion.7390:

40+ silver for dust would be awesome. Finally running events in Orr won’t have to feel like such a huge waste of time that I do anyway because “Zombies are cool.”

Issue is, even if dust is worth 1g, it do is a waste of time.

Because the amout of dust you get is so low right now.

(event time increased, mob loot killed, share drop rates with other t6 mats both form mobs and form bags, and, overall, it’s all down RGN)

Blaeys.3102:

The community is a little too eager to jump at every single tiny change like it is something that broke the game.

Broke the game?

Absolutely not.

But i’d take a loot at T6 mats prices trend.

That is gamebreaking for a lot of ppl. And is direct consequence of farming nerfs.

btw: grats vol. i didn’t even had a green in all the istigator spamming. only shells and blu crap. :p

I’ll get it straight: if you’re aiming such kind of weapon, there will be farming.

Probably a LOT (not how much for a legg, but a quite large share).

And Charged are by a long shot the worst lodestones to farm.

Around 3 possible ways to do so:
-Coe (DG) chests have chance to drop charged cores/lodestones. On the other hand the dg itself isn’t the easiest one (if you’re not a usual dg lover/runner – nothing unbeatable, but might give ya some issues), it’s not either really fast (unless you’re speedrunning – doubt you’re doing it if you hate dgs) and drop rate not really great.
-farm gold (in any way), buy cores/lodestones from TP.
-farm sparks (mobs) in malchor’s leap/CS. those mobs have terrible drop rate and are situational spawns.
(if you have a bunch of karma you can trow it in orrian boxes, but it’s so unrealiable that it isn’t almost an option.)

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

The latest case of “farming nerfs” was actually a bug fix. I’m aware of this because I was asked to help identify the issue. The area in question contained a spawn that was defined to have more creatures than spots for those creatures to spawn. So for example, 25 skelks spawning on 10 points. This is not intended. Not only does it just look absurd, it’s also leads to some extremely bizarre play conditions. This is one of those bugs that’s so buggy, the fact that our toolset even allowed this to happen is a bug. Another bug caused this bug. Bugception.

If we didn’t want players to be able to farm, we wouldn’t have put in the huge (and free) magic and gold find buffs for Southsun Cove. We wouldn’t drop loot from the giant mobs of creatures that appear in upscaled events. We certainly wouldn’t have put in chests that appear after events which cycle every 8 to 10 minutes. How quickly all of that content goes completely forgotten in the angered responses to a simple change to an area that was clearly bugged. :/

On farming in general, there’s a sweet spot that combines good loot with fun, engaging content. I think Southsun had that going for it, especially before certain aspects of the content were isolated as optimal. As someone who’s actively working on upcoming Living World releases, I’m aiming to find that sweet spot and hit it in a big way.

2 things:
-bugfixes and farm nerfs are separate issues imo. for example, union/malchor events getting stalled on purpose by players for farm endless mobs wave is something that HAD to be fixed. It’s obvious.
The issue is when something who has been treated as “correct” farming income for months, namely the tunnel event farming in CS, gets arbitrarly butchered for no apparent reason… aside pushing more ppl to southsun. This is something that shoudln’t happen, because after southsun won’t be anymore the flavour of the month, i’m sure the CS nerf will stay, and i guess your economist can easily tell you what this means…

because (leads to point 2)

-the moaning about farming getting nerfed is manly due to recent T6 (in general) and Dust (in particular) prices rising. Which has much much wider consequences than simple “ppl stop farming there, go in southsun or cof”.

Palu.3405:

Hopefully the price of dust will fall once people stop farming Southsun and return to Orr

It won’t.

Because even if all the farmers get back to Orr, events have been nerfed to the ground.

They spawn more rarely
Mobs drops less
And again, can drop any T6 mat – and Bags are another RGN fest.

LordByron.8369:

mm never used Sw/Sw…..seems its good for cof1 last boss also

You mean sword phantasm? or clones?

I mean pop up clones with iLeap, they use your autoattack chain which removes a boon every 3 hit.
You autattacking + 2/3 clones removing a boon every 3 hit + eventual Disenchanter and Null Field…well.

Mesmer is on line with Guard for dmg, most of the times.
Thief decently geared/built for dps beats both from a quite long shot.
Nobody beats War DPS.

Ele is just too niche and ureliable to me, for being considered on par with guard/mes.
It’s not matter of sheer numbers.

About coe golem, never had issues at suppressing his boons for the whole fight.

Get out 3 sword clones
Do not pop any phantasm, except Disenchanter
Use null field/feedback when golem wipes your illusions
Autoattack all the way
(added: swap out trait to strip boons on shatter)

Your personal DPS will be bad – even compared to the average mesmer one – but stripping off protection (most important) retal (so your wars don’t melt) and regen (cause we can) is much more valuable than another war zerking around, imo.

About the OP topic:
imo the issue in war teams is that warriors, to be the top dps class (which is intended) trade off both survivability (outside 2 dodges+whirlind and shake it off) and party utlity (aside banners and stacking FGJ). Which is why to tackle some more serious stuff, 1 Mes or 1 Guard or both are added.
Guard is able to be backbone of the party, dishing out boons stripping conditions keeping up protection (hammer) and help in projectile protection, while in full zerk/knight gear for decent dmg.
Mes pulls stealth strip boons can spike up vuln stacks reflect projectiles port aoe quickness stun protect multiply boons push and much more. While still in zerk gear.

So, depends what are you doing.
But most of the times imo the addedd utility of a mes (or party wide support while decent dps of guard) are better than straigh in your face top notch dps of another war.

There’s something that some ppl are missing seems.

While it’s true that the last kick up of dust prices is due to farmers moving to southsun, when they’ll get back to orr everything will happen is blood and scales go up to 30-35s mark – because less ppl farm sharks, karka and skales.

Why?

Cause meanwhile, to push even MORE ppl to southsun where it’s running the event they’ve crafted this month, they’ve butchered CS farming.

When you spend like 40 mins and none of the 4-5 tunnel events starts (across 3 servers, checking with friends), you know that something is wrong.

This means that, southsun event aside, the main supply of all T6 mats (direct drops but manly Heavy Moldy Bags) has been significantly reduced. Which leads to a general up in price (claw+totem near 20s, bones at 15s – madness!). Southsun is helping because the increased amount of supply for blood/scales is keepingthe prices of those 2 mats in line, but how long will it last?
(i severely doubt that they’ll leave a free 200% MF boost after all events are done.)

Dust is the most pressing issue, because it’s used everywhere, should be the cheapest T6, while atm it’s the most out of whack in price. But other mats might skyrocket soon, if Anet decides they’re fine with this state.
Ofc, meanwhile, nobody promotes anymore cores of T5 mats in MForge due to Dust cost. Nobody crafts anymore lvl 400 consumables.
And there aren’t enough dust on the TP to craft more that a couple of bifrost – on the whole GW2 population.

It’s the only long range power option.

Staff- mid range, mix of cond/power
Scepter – worthless for both specs, mid range

….and stop.

If you do not take in account off hands.

Everybody stand up and cheer for Cystalline Dust finally touching the 40 silver mark.

GG Anet!

Seras.5702:

Out of curiosity, why does everyone say Mesmers are bad till 40? What happens at 40 that suddenly makes em EZ?

Because mesmer is designe with a quite crappy baseline of skills power, which is compensated by some incredibly god traits and trait line.

At 40 you’ll be able to deep till 20 pts…which mean, usually, till Deceptive evasion + Sharpening Images.
It’s a turning point, because you finally get a non weapon/utlity CD related clone generation tool and stacking bleeding opportunity trough phants.

butch.8136:

r15 in HA in gw1 took 6 years or so. And that was an account played full time.

This.

/thread

Obtena.7952:

It get’s you out playing the game instead of running CoF p1 for a week straight.

Oh, i’d love to.

Then you get out trying to farm by yourself stuff….

-DR
-incredibly low and frustrating droprate
-every even slightly decent farm spot hammered over and over every patch
-best bet are Moldy bags, which are RGN fest (again), where 8 mat out of 10 are t5…that i can’t promote because due to dust prices it costs me more than straight buy t6 off tp.

That’s the point.

Jyeoi.6027:

Hahaha exactly. Stacking for buffs is outdated tactics. You invite the opposition to mass cc you, spike aoe and turn you all into loot bags.

Well, you obviously want to be clever when using combos, because they rely on a field on the ground, which means you’re locked in a tigh area.

Example:
-zerg vs zerg in open field (and close to each other) = bad.
-breakout to disperse a zerg ramming your gate (buff behind gate, veil on port, rush trough it and smash ppl on the other side) = good.

Manly, it’s all down to chosing the right place and timing (which means usually how good your commander is). It’s always situational.
Oh, and execution speed matters too.

Everything you need to know about combos in wvw:

-Blast+Fire = Might aoe
-Blast+Water = Heal aoe
-Blast+Static = Swiftness aoe

Everything else is secondary, even if situationally can be good (whirl+light = cond removal, blast + light= retal aoe).

Also, when you’re regrouping to do combos only that specific kind onf field must be laid.

In other words, To all guardians around, STOP using symbols when ppl try to buff up.

When you get aoe retal instead of 2 min swiftness because a guard laid down a symbol while ppl blast a static field, it’s incredibly annoying.