Guild Wars 2

Since you’re building a new pc, I’d go for skylake with high speed ddr4:
http://pcpartpicker.com/p/8xXG8d ~900$

i5 4690k, i7 4790k, i5 5675c or i7 5775c will work with the ddr3 you already have, and can be overclocked to have the best single core performance.

The problem is the cpu, which has very weak single core performance and it is what the game demands.

UmbraNoctis.1907:

Ansau.7326:

In one hand, condi duration from foods has been nerf, but in the other hand, now we have stats with expertise, and -% condi duration food has also been nerfed.

In the end, I think condi builds will have more advantage, as now lemongrass is not so appealing, and condi builds with expertise will cover the lost of condi duration from the nerf of foods.

To get extra condition duration from gear they have to give up condition dmg and defensive stats. They don’t get those new stats for free – unlike the bonus from the food, nerfing it (both versions!) was a good decision.

There’s a new stat called Trailblazer, which gives + condi damage, + thougness, – vitality, – expertise. It’s like Dire, but with slightly less condi damage and vitality, and more toughness and the new stat expertise.
A full Trailblazer set, compared to full Dire, should lose 94 of condi damage and 170 of vitality, to gain 99 of toughness and 21,6% of condi duration.

I have an r9 285 and it has plenty of performance for this game. Playing at 1440p nearly at ultra plus reshade on top and in the new maps I’m playing at 40-60fps.

The thing is to disable reflections, shadows and put to medium Character quantity limit to Medium. These settings are very cpu intensive and are the truly fps killers, when at the same time the graphic improvement they provide is minimal.

New maps are more graphic intensive, so it is normal to see such drops with your gpu, which is a boosted gt 555m.

In one hand, condi duration from foods has been nerf, but in the other hand, now we have stats with expertise, and -% condi duration food has also been nerfed.

In the end, I think condi builds will have more advantage, as now lemongrass is not so appealing, and condi builds with expertise will cover the lost of condi duration from the nerf of foods.

Thank you for the change, now it’ll be a lot easier for people to enjoy the jungle with the new specs and for wvwers and the alts!!!

Thank you anet for listening to your playerbase. Even 250 hero points is quite a lot, now it’s a reasonable number, specially for wvw players.

Tuesday, still farming the first elite specialization. I negate myself to unlock them though the jungle. I want to explore it with the new elite specializations fully unlocked. Also, it hurts so much for WvWers.

Still thinking 400 hero points is just overkill.

From my experience, it can take around 150 WvW levels to get the entire elite specialization. Bonus chests are only given at the start of every matchup, and its only 3 or 4 rounds of extra chests. And about the ratio of proofs, each chest can give from 2 to 4 proofs, but most of the times you’ll get 2.

New maps are more gpu intensive than olders. Make sure the gpu is running at x16.

Here is my experience after the weekend:

I haven’t played the game, I’ve grinded it. Sadly, I’ve spent 14h in EoTM doing karma train to get hero points, and the time needed to unlock a single elite specialization is beyond any reasonable.
For WvW the issue is BIG. There’s need to be done anything for such ridiculous amount of time needed.

But yesterday, after bored and tired from such grinding, I gave it a try in the new maps. They’re great, gorgeous, they bring new stuff, the mastery system is interesting… but all this is destroyed by the simple fact of the limitations of elite specialization unlock.
After an hour trying to do the stuff as an original mesmer, it felt what I’ve always thought. New content should be done with new elite specializations. Now it seems like you need to eat a soup with a fork to be able to use a spoon… It’s just awkward.
After that, I abandoned the idea of enjoying the new content and focus to grind hero points. But to my surprise, not only you need to upgrade the mastery system, but content can only be done in groups, which is terrible since I couldn’t do several hero challenges since I was alone.
The whole experience feels really boring and frustrating.

So now not only you need a fork to eat the soup to be able to use a spoon, but before you need to sharpen a knife and get friends to build the fork to eat the soup to use the spoon…
Why did you built such a complex and ridiculous system? Why didn’t you give us the spoon and let us enjoy the soup, which is what is supposed to be enjoyed?

The only thing staff is not really a condi weapon, but more a jack of all trades master of none.
It has a bit of everything, but each one is pretty meh by its own.

cygnus.8913:

Ansau.7326:

Ok, done some farming of hero points in WvW and here are the results:
- Time spent: 4h.
- Way spended: Pure PvD optimized farming (karma train, killing all guards, trying always to get catas or rams…).
- Bonus: I have the celebration bonus which gives +100% WvW experience.
- Hero points gained: 41.

Doing maths, I will need 80h per character of pure PvD farming, or 40h with WvW experience boost.

I need to get, at least, 2 full elite specializations, which will require 80h of pure farming. I’ve played about 2500h since the game started, so I need to spend more than 3% of the time I’ve spent in this game in intensive PvD farming to be able to use skills and traits.

This is blatantly ridiculous and there’s no way this can be considered character progression.

I don’t think 40 hours is too bad (I know your example is with a booster) to max out the spec. I’d be happy with that – it’s pretty much what a traditional MMO would have you do to obtain ten levels.

Time should be counted as 80h, since 40 is with 2 celebration boosters spent (which is something not everybody has, neither you can buy).

But the worst thing is pretty much the optimized time in perfect PvD farming, which is not like dungeon farming. If your server doesn’t have a blob capping everything, or if eotm theres no karma train when you connect, needed time gets increased alarmingly.

For example, with roaming it’s arguably impossible.

Ok, done some farming of hero points in WvW and here are the results:
- Time spent: 4h.
- Way spended: Pure PvD optimized farming (karma train, killing all guards, trying always to get catas or rams…).
- Bonus: I have the celebration bonus which gives +100% WvW experience.
- Hero points gained: 41.

Doing maths, I should need 80h per character of pure PvD farming, or 40h with WvW experience boost.

I need to get, at least, 2 full elite specializations, which will require more than 80h of pure farming (since I only have 3 celebration boosters). I’ve played about 2500h since the game started, so I need to spend nearly 4% of the time I’ve spent in this game in intensive PvD farming to be able to use skills and traits.

This is blatantly ridiculous and there’s no way this can be considered character progression.

They changed the cost, now it’s 1 proof per Maguuma scroll and 10 for a new map scroll. Each level should give 4 proofs, so you should need 100 WvW levels and 2000 badges for every specialization.

Ridiculously high.

Spambot.3625:

Ansau.7326:

This hero point system is just absurd.
First, each elite specialization needs too much points to be unlocked, really 60 to just unlock it and 400 to get everything?
Second, it’s not account bound… What the heck were you thinking?
Third, to get hero points you just need to grind, yes grind map completions, grind EOTM zerg…

I’ve calculated that to unlock an entire elite specialization per character requires about 100 WvW levels and 2000 badges.

For people who has alts it’s just a suicide mission.

Anet and devs, you really need to tone down A LOT the hero points required.

no its actually good, you shouldnt be able to progress your character instantly but rather have to put work into it

what gw2 was lacking was character progression, this is one step into forward by anet, loving it

First, gw2 and gw1 have never been about long character progress, but more about character personalization. The actual hero point system requires much more resources than the game can supply in the way it’s designed.
I’ve already put in the last post. An elite specialization costs 100 extra levels of WvW or to do all hero challenges in the new maps, for every character.
To put into perspective, if you wanted to get the elite specializations of 4 alts, you would need about 2-3 months of pure PvD farming or to pass 4 times all new maps, which are not that easy as normal maps…

Second, you forget that there hasn’t been a hero point reset, so existent characters max leveled have to go through all this, while all new characters can spend points into the elite specialization instead of other specializations or skills (noticing that elite specializations are far better than a single one of the others).

Then, the amount of hero points required to get a single elite specialization is not proportionate whith the others, costing 2 points more to unlock an elite specialization (400) than all core skills and core specializations together (398).

And finally, this specialization system is designed to have multiple elite specializations (which you can only have one activated). Once you put into the equation a second elite specialization, the hero point requirements to have everything unlocked is just out of any possible limit.

This hero point system is just absurd.
First, each elite specialization needs too much points to be unlocked, really 60 to just unlock it and 400 to get everything?
Second, it’s not account bound… What the heck were you thinking?
Third, to get hero points you just need to grind, yes grind map completions, grind EOTM zerg…

I’ve calculated that to unlock an entire elite specialization per character requires about 100 WvW levels and 2000 badges.

For people who has alts it’s just a suicide mission.

Anet and devs, you really need to tone down A LOT the hero points required.

Undo the OC if you have it, or downclock a little bit the gpu to see if it helps. HD7900 gpus are known for a lot of glitches and problems.

There’s a lot of people who say mesmer are too OP at the moment, yet they don’t know anything about the class.
People who think mesmers are too OP usually lack that bit of experience people should have to be considered as a valid voice when arguing.
There was that guildmate who said mesmers were just too much, and I asked how to kill a PU condi mesmer, and he said it’s impossible. Then I add heavy condi pressure and I’m still waiting for his response.

Mesmers are not OP. Yes, they are very powerful in some scenarios, specially in small scale fights and duels, but that doesn’t mean they are unkillable. In the other hand, they are subpar compared to other professions in other scenarios, like pve or big scale fights.

It amazes me how people can criticize mesmer performance, while eles, warriors and guards are meta in absolutely all game modes, necros can deal insane damage in AoE while having 50-70k of health pool, thieves can deal +10k damage with 1 button and from stealth or rangers can deal great burst from 1500 where they’re completely safe.

But it seems that if mesmer is anything but rubbish it deserves to be nerfed.

Hello everyone. I main a mesmer, but engi has always been my second fav profession. Since the reveal of the new action camera and the interaction with engis, I’ve been thinking about changing my main professions for the wvw raids with my guild and general zerguing.
But I lack knowledge of successful builds from the engi, and with the Scrapper it gets worse xd

So I looking for some builds (both ranged and melee) to see more or less what it is capable of and to have a base to create mine

Both gpus are good values for their prices, but coming from a 280x, it’s a tiny downgrade, specially with the 960.
Despite that, both are still more than capable of running this game. 380 is a bit more powerful, but 960 is cooler, quieter and consumes less power.
Also, Nvidia has had a lot of problems with its drivers for the past 6 months and, even it’s not as awful as before, there’s still people having some issues.

I have the r9 285 overclocked, it’s the same as the 380, and it can run the game at 1440p nearly ultra with Reshade enabled at 55-70fps and 30-35fps in zergs (everything maxed with shadows and reflections disabled, and character limit quantity to medium).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83EamUJwFFU

The 960 should perform pretty much the same.

Put a screenshot with CPU-Z and GPU-Z while gaming.

I disagree with the ram. Speed ram helps with minimum fps (specially in intensive cpu games like gw2), which translates in a smoother experience.
Also, that 212 evo will be short if you plan to do any overclock.

Fay.2357:

nearlight.3064:

Ithilwen.1529:

ANET nerfed the heal on shatter to near uselesness and the blinds. It kinda works. This is a stop gap for me, hoping for better with HoT.

You meant to say bug fixed the blinds, right?

Also, how on earth did they nerf the heal on shatter? It was unusable before due to how IP functioned with it.

They didn’t nerf it, but there was a bug that made healing nearly twice as it should be. It is true that the trait was awkward since to make it good you needed IP, but that doesn’t mean that the combo was not strong, and now is worse than before.
I tried a Staff-S/S build with that in mind, before the crit nerf with the introduction of ferocity, and it was better than I expected. The sustain was impressive and the damage still quite high.

reddie.5861:

EU is mainly +1 gmt thus if u take +1 gmt as prime time from let say 19:00 till 00:00 and after that u change the ticks in a way that capping stuff doesnt make the

Here is where you make the biggest mistake you could. Settling a prime time based on what you’re used is just plain wrong.
I’m from Spain and here the prime time is from 10pm to 3am CET. Then you need to count English and Portuguese people who live in CET -1. Then all Russian people who play CET +1 or even more. Then…

The same way you want score to stop after midnight, I want it to stop after 3am… Don’t you realize how selfish is this?

The gpu is running at pcie x1 1.1. Make sure is settled in the pcie 3.0 spot and it’s running at x16 while gaming

Zintrothen.1056:

Ansau.7326:

• Chronophantasma. I don’t have a problem with the time, since phantasms already have a 0.75s internal CD. But the stun, I find it’s just too much. Phantasms are locked in the ground, and melee ones have a harder time, since enemies move and they need to catch them, putting themselves in dangerous situations where they die before attacking.
  I think Daze would be the ideal CC applied.

They actually are suppose to be dazed, but there’s a bug that makes daze on NPCs act like stun, and I guess illusions are NPCs.

Ups my fault, I thought it had Stun applied :P

Macilien.3078:

Ansau.7326:

Scaling score based on total active population is not only a bad design, but also an unfair.
It’s bad because coverage is not a stale thing, it always fluctuates and it only benefits those servers with more coverage and taxes those with less, since as more coverage you have, more determinant is your server activity to the equation and this system is only benefiting your prime time.

Scaling the tick this way does the exact opposite, it gives those times more weight that have more people around and I don’t see how you come up with any different conclusion so I give a simple example.
All 3 servers filled all WvW maps and those are (for this example) 600 players so the tick is counted at 100%. At an other time there are only 60 players around so the the tick is counted only at 10%, this way it doesn’t matter this much even if it is something like 40 vs 10 vs 10.

I don’t understand why people don’t see this idea is unnatural. The world is full of examples where the same individual has a much bigger impact over a small system than a large one.
For a small business it matters a lot to grant 50.000 or 60.000 per year. To Wall Mart, Apple, Zara… it doesn’t for 18.499.990.000 instead of 18.500.000.000.
The same, if an employee of Wall Mart gets ill, the business is so big they’ll find someone to substitute, but if a DJ gets ill, he cannot perform aka doesn’t win money.
And exactly the same happens in war. A good soldier nowadays matters a lot, because fights are done with way less population, but back the ancient times (old China, Egypt, Rome…) a single guy killing 15 enemies instead of 10 didn’t have a real impact on the overall result.
So, in off-hours timezones, actions from less people HAS to be more impactful than actions from more people in prime time. It’s nature and life, fact.

By no means, servers with problems in off-time shouldn’t have a chance without putting more efforts than normal in their prime time. A server being outnumbered for some hours should outnumber the other servers for the amount of hours needed.

And for the third time, this is a 24h competition where all hours matter the same. If you care so much about a controlled and fair system, sPvP is your best friend.
But this idea “I should win because I play during my hours” is just nonsense and shows a completely and utterly lack of comprehension of what a 24h system is.

Macilien.3078:

Ansau.7326:

You forget that in some servers the night population is a big part of the total active population, and there’s more people playing at nights than what you might think.

Well that would be only Baruch as far as EU is concerned, but I didn’t say that you are not allowed to gain points at night, I just think it would be far healthier for WvW if this was scaled by the currently active WvW-population. (for all times actually if this was your concern)

Focusing the ppt problem only during nights is not a good way. This is a 24h competition and all hours should matter the same. If you plan to address the ppt issues from large coverage disparities, it needs to be done across all day.
Also, not having coverage at a big part of the day such the night only shows the server doesn’t have the coverage as it seems.

Because we always need to have in mind this is a 24h competition.

My server is the exact opposite of yours, I’m on a German server and the overwhelming majority lives in one time zone, with the result that most people are unable to contribute 2/3 of the day due to sleep and work/school.

Scaling score based on total active population is not only a bad design, but also an unfair.
It’s bad because coverage is not a stale thing, it always fluctuates and it only benefits those servers with more coverage and taxes those with less, since as more coverage you have, more determinant is your server activity to the equation and this system is only benefiting your prime time.

You’re again in the presumption that servers have tons of populations during primetimes and no people during offtimes. But the reality is prime time doesn’t affect that much to the overall score as people think.
Server performance should never be calculated by prime time potential, because again, this is a 24h competition.

What we need is a system that regulates the massive disparities with coverages that are produced, so a server is not penalized so much for having way less people playing, or in the same way, a server doesn’t take too much profit for outnumbering the others. And this system has to work across all servers, all timezones and all situations.

Macilien.3078:

It’s rather a few hundred peoples night is the day of a few others. The point is not that off-time shouldn’t contribute at all, but in proportion to active population, as it is right now the majority of the population has very little influence on the final result.

You forget that in some servers the night population is a big part of the total active population, and there’s more people playing at nights than what you might think.

Focusing the ppt problem only during nights is not a good way. This is a 24h competition and all hours should matter the same. If you plan to address the ppt issues from large coverage disparities, it needs to be done across all day.
Also, not having coverage at a big part of the day such the night only shows the server doesn’t have the coverage as it seems.

Because we always need to have in mind this is a 24h competition.

Fixing nightcapping is the wrong way of doing things, you’re discriminating people only because they don’t live where the main communities do.

What it needs to be addressed is points gained when one server has way more coverage than the others, in any time of the day.

In general, Chronomancer is a really nice specialization. It’s fun and add things to some of the weakest parts of mesmer. It also goes well with any other mesmer line and can be used in a lot of different builds.
All it needs is some small tweaks.

Traits
Overall I find them quite good, but I think the grandmaster ones lack that tiny bit of performance to be on the good spot. And mainly this is a problem when you compare them to the rest of the traits, since grandmaster traits should be the most rewarding.

• Lost Time should give 3s of Slow. It’s a bit strange that an Adept trait is granting more slow and it doesn’t have a limiting mechanic, while Lost Time requires a set up to deal less amount of Slow. I think the Slow time granted should be exchanged between both traits.
• Seize the Moment. I’ve tested a lot, rewatching my recordings and the conclusion is the quickness is not enough. Half of the time this trait is useless (since it doesn’t activate with self shattering and 1s with 1 illusion is already half eaten by human time reactions and latencies). It needs to grant quickness to self shatter or increase the one granted per illusion.
• Chronophantasma. I don’t have a problem with the time, since phantasms already have a 0.75s internal CD. But the stun, I find it’s just too much. Phantasms are locked in the ground, and melee ones have a harder time, since enemies move and they need to catch them, putting themselves in dangerous situations where they die before attacking.
  I think Daze would be the ideal CC applied.
  Thought it apply stun instead of daze, and now knowing the daze time is about 1.5s, I find it is a bit too much. Still thinking 1s is the ideal.

And one last thing, All’s Well that Ends Well alacrity time is too much, 1-1.5s would be the ideal. It makes Well of Recall weird and an entire group of skills are used for a sole purpose instead of what those skills were designed for, just like with confusion glamour.

Shield
Both skills are very interesting and add a different playstyle. The problem is both are weirdly bugged. Block sometimes are bypassed by CC or some attacks, and Times of Tide doesn’t return in specific situations someone already has pointed.
About iAvenger, I like being a melee phantasm, but it should be created at the start of the block, so it has more chances to do its work, and the skill now can summon 2 phantasms, making it more successful having in mind the poor situation of phantasms creation.

Wells
I like the SMALL.big design of our wells, but in some of them, the small pulses are too weak compared to the final. It’s frustrating that you only use them for the final pulse.

• Well of Calamity. With a quite offensive build, the small pulses only do crits about 700-800ish when the final can deal +4000. The skill is lost if enemies get out of the are before the final pulse triggers, and this is critical in WvW and zerg fights.
  Damage from the small pulses should be buffed.
• Well of Eternity. Same happens. You need to wait nearly 4s for the final healing, and meanwhile you only get AoE 4s of vigor, which is very low.
  Small pulses need some healing of more appealing and defensive boons to counter the fact that you are locked into well’s area and you’re an easy target.
• Well of Recall. With All’s Well that Ends Well trait, the alacrity granted is underwhelming, specially because its purpose is done better with the trait than the skill itself. Being a skill based of recharge rate, the alacrity granted should be around 1.5s or 2s, so the skill is used more for what it’s been designed and not to have another well that grants alacrity.
  And another reason is All’s Well that Ends Well makes it worse, buffing the final pulse while small remain the same.
  The rest of well are much better designed, and good examples of how these should be.

Continuum Split
Mindblowing, amazing, one of a hell of fun… Whoever had the idea of this skill, kitten good job.
So good it needs some tone down, and I’m pointing to time granted per illusion, being a max time of kitten (1.5s from self shatter +1s per illusion).
6s is too much and it only make us to spam as much skills as we can.

Finally, here’s a video of some of my experiences with Chronomancer and some blasting things we can do:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2Z5D5Uo8J8

MrFayth.3546:

That wasn’t much of an upgrade at all. Discounting DX12 capabilities(which wont help in Gw2), your 660 is actually stronger in some areas.

They both have 2GB of vRAM but the 660 travels over a 192-bit bus compared to the 128-bit of the 960. Giving the 660 a higher Memory Bandwidth than the 960(144GB/s compared to 112GB/s)

The 660 has 80 Texture Mapping Units compared to the 960s 64TMUs. Giving the 660 a higher Texture Fill Rate( 78 Gigatexels a second compared to 72)

The 960 does have more Render Output Units than the 660, 32 vs 24, giving the 960 superior Pixel Fill Rates( 36 gigapixels per second compared to 19).

At the end of the day..Id consider this a sidegrade as far as Gw2 is concerned.

Slight upgrade for other,future, gaming needs.

960 is physically more powerful than 660.

Maxwell comes with advanced compression algorithm than allows to nearly match 192 bit performance at same speed. But 960 vram runs faster and can overclock much more. And there’s still another point, 960 has 8 more ROPS than 660, so the conclusion is the 960 can use the vram more and better.

TMU of 960 are at stock, which pretty much all models of 960 run higher than that. And the 960 can overclock much higher. You end up having more texture fill rate with the 960.

You don’t count CUDA cores, where the 960 has 66 more, and neither SMX where the 960 has 8 compared to the 5 of the 660.

Then there’s tessellation performance, where the 960 blows the 660.

Cpu: i3 4130 or similar.
Motherboard: H81/B85 (Check for compatibility).
RAM: 4GB.
Gpu: r7 260x/r7 370/gtx 750ti…
HDD: 500gb WD blue.

Try disabling Reflections, shadows and put Character model limit to medium. Also check Field of View in General Options (full reduces a lot the framerate).

What’s happening is in such crowded situations the cpu is so fulled with tons of calculations than both the cpu and the gpu have to wait them, so they “idle” and the result is lower usage.

To understand, here’s an example:
You need to complete tasks 1, 2, 3… Each task has subtasks. A and B are done in the cpu and C and D in the gpu.
In massive fights, subtask A takes 10s to be finished, while the rest take 5s. You cannot finish task 1 until all subtasks are done, so you end up with the gpu and part of the cpu having free time.
On the other hand, when you see gpu usage at 99% and cpu barely at 40-50%, is because subtasks A and B only need 2-3s to be finished and the gpu doesn’t have time to stop, when subtasks from task 1 are done, the ones from task 2 are ready to be rendered.

In conclusion, the game engine is not designed to support big scale fights with massive amount of people. It doesn’t cut things to render and calculate to have a better performance and some of the parts of the cpu end up being bombarded with the work from tons of players. We need to do it manually by reducing or disabling taxing settings.

Make sure the gpu is running at pcie 3.0 x16.

Building a rig is easier than what one could think. The only “hard” thing is the cpu paste and cooler installing. But besides that, it’s basically screwdriver and cable management.

About the specs, I’d go:
- i7 6700k and overclock it as much as you can.
- Top notch cpu cooler to reach max cpu frequencies (DH-15, Cryorig R1, Corsair H100i GTX…).
- 16GB ddr4 at 3000 or 3200MHz.
- GTX 970/R9 390 (for any mmo this is already overkill).
- SSD for gw2.
- 1440p screen.

Thankfully PU has been nerfed to 50% and torch trait bug has been fixed. Now all the noobs roaming with mesmers for the uber cheesy way can go back to their main professions, and the true mesmers can keep with their true god mode builds without being demonized.

Fay.2357:

Ansau.7326:

Anyway, you’re just proving again my point. The thing is not what we can do compared to eles or necros, but what we can do as a mesmers.

This is absolutely absurd!

So let me get this straight, your point is that you don’t want to bother thinking about what other classes can do, but just feel happy about the best you can do no matter what?

Sorry, but that line of reasoning doesn’t work once you get out of parent-pitch baseball leagues. Your personal performance is meaningless without a comparison to everyone else. You can’t go around touting how great your damage is if everyone else has damage that just blows yours out of the water! That’s like entering a marathon and saying that 8 hours is a fantastic time because it’s the best you can personally do, while ignoring all the other folks that finished in 4 hours.

Numbers are meaningless without comparison. In our case, the comparison must be made between us and the other classes that fill a similar role: eles and necros. When you make that comparison, it is plain for all to see just how extraordinarily pathetic our performance is.

That argument would be valid if other professions could do the same as we can do. But the reality is mesmers are still needed for the unique features we can bring. Once this point has been settled, the only question that matters is how do you perform as a mesmer, let it be as the profession who only brings those unique things, or be more useful besides that?
Here is where comparing us to eles or necros is pointless.

I never said it was easy, but being more difficult doesn’t mean impossible. And sorry, but I’ve been playing mesmers in zergs for 1.5 years and I haven’t found major problems on any what you say.
Even the lost of self distortion in Protected Phantasms doesn’t affected much, since the meta has moved to the known pirateship, so the past incursions you could do now are nonsense.

Anyway, you’re just proving again my point. The thing is not what we can do compared to eles or necros, but what we can do as a mesmers.
You all lose yourselves in this nonsense discussion about how eles and necros can do much damage than us. And this is why this community has failed so much at bringing a good build for zerguing.
Your heads are so focused on what others do compared to us that you forget what you can do as a mesmer, so you just end up playing as a veilbot and put mesmers as a useless profession.

PD: All this damage numbers are calculations with a quite conservative gear required for my past playstyle, plus the increase of damage from the stats rebuild I’ve seen a bit. But once I’m able to mixmax the stats for this pirateship meta I think the numbers can be higher (here not counting the huge numbers chronomancer will bring).

Fay.2357:

You’re horrendously misrepresenting the facts of the situation. Let’s get more specific to cut through the bluster, shall we?

Mesmer bursting damage is typically quite strong. The standard mirror blade burst combo can unload 10k-13k damage nearly instantly, and that’s very powerful. However, there are caveats associated with this:

Firstly, that burst is single target. For an aoe burst value, you can remove about 4k off the top, leaving us at 6k-9k total. Additionally, this burst relies on 2 clones; one from mirror blade and one from a dodge roll. Lastly, this burst requires you to be at point blank range of your target to execute, otherwise the damage drops drastically.

All 3 of these things are a big problem. If you only burst a single person, their allies will just hit F and res them instantly. Leaving the burst reliant on illusions means that in a situation with aoe pressure, your burst will be 100% eliminated. Lastly, being at point blank range in an enemy group is distinctly unhealthy.

Now, let’s compare it to what eles are capable of doing. Meteor shower is a large aoe capable of being cast from 1200 range. It hits many times, effectively having an extremely high target cap. Each hit from meteor shower will do 6k-8k damage on a squishy target.

So here we have one single skill from Elementalist. It does similar damage in a single hit to what Mesmer does in a burst combo. It hits many targets, can be cast from 1200 range, and is ground targeted with a big aoe making it useful on walls.

If literally the only skill on their bar was meteor shower, Elementalists would still be better than mesmers.

You’ve also got lava font, the 1200 range aoe doing 3k-4k a tick. On the utility side you’ve got static field, unsteady ground, and multiple water fields. Essentially, Elementalist is just better at everything other than portal and veil.

Necros are similar. Their wells do massive damage, 3kish per pulse for some of them. On top of that, the wells do nasty things like boon corruption or blindness. On top of that, their wells are unblockable. On top of that, necros can pop into death shroud for additional 50% crit chance, meaning they can build with quite tanky gear and still achieve massive damage output.

You’re trying to say that Mesmer burst is actually good and makes up for their lack of aoe capabilities. The reality is that Mesmer burst is not only difficult to execute effectively, but is hardly more powerful than a single hit of meteor shower, or a couple ticks of wells.

If you put me Mirror Blade as the main source of spike damage in zergs, there’s nothing much more to say.
Mesmer damage in zergs comes from MW, iZerker, BF, The Prestige or MoP (all these without counting Chronomancer). With those skills the damage per target goes from 2k up to 6-7k, and you can easily hit 2-3 people for every skill, which starts to be quite considerable.

Fay.2357:

This is total bunk.

I and many others have tried our very best to make mesmers viable in terms of large damage output in a zerg. Unfortunately, it’s simply not possible due to the mechanics of the class. You’ll try something, get a bit of success with it, then go play a staff ele for comparison and realize just how incomparable the two are. Ever since glamours were nerfed into the ground, mesmer has been 100% totally nonviable for significant damage output other than in a pick group.

Your mentality is what I’m talking about: First, since eles and necros do way more damage than us, let’s forget about this thing, WRONG.
And second you measure the damage as the amount of hits you achieve, and that’s the wrong way to do it (Better deal 4k to 2 people than 1000 to 15).

I won’t negate our damage is much lower than eles and necros, but that doesn’t mean we’re not able to do big damage spikes. In fact, mesmers are more capable than what people usually think.

3 things:
- Mesmers are treated just as tools because the mesmers put themselves in that job, just as veil/portal bot. It’s really hard to see a mesmer who is pushing to do as much damage as it could. Most run very conservative build to not to die, or even some have run the glamour confusion build years after it was nerfed to the ground.

- Mesmer players take a passive playstyle in zergs. That means you wait for the commander to do your work. Be smarter, put a veil in a charge without the commander asking to do it, channel a second veil, pay attention to the chat for people asking for the portal, be proactive and tell the commander to do portal bombs…

- Most mesmers are more worried about tagging enemies, than be impactful. With this mentality it’s difficult for our profession to be successful and commanders to appreciate us more.

displayname.8315:

The only reason those servers are in T3 is because they work the glicko system to obtain a matchfixing balance where they all stay stagnated together. A glaring example of why glicko is Kinda Pathetic.

Glicko system is not pathetic, but people stacking in servers so glicko is not working well. The same way guns don’t kill people, but people using guns kill other people.
Problem is with the people, not the system.

displayname.8315:

Ansau.7326:

About the system win-up lose-down, in reality it is worse, because you’d end up having very unfair matchups. It happened when they made more freely the glicko, and quickly there were tons of people asking to a more locked system, since what was happening was not fun, one week you were stomped by a server and in the next you stomped another week.

That may have been true when it was possible for servers to be wildly imbalanced. That is not the case anymore stop living in the past.

No, you’re wrong. With that system:
- Maguuma next week should face Sea of Sorrow (+200 rating) and Jade Quarry (+530 rating).
- Fort Aspenwood would face Crystal Desert (-180) and (-385).

Now do you really think Maguuma has a chance against those servers? And do you think FA would have a hard time against those 2 others?
Glicko is just a representation of the reality. So big differences in rating means big differences in coverage.
The first 2-3 weeks would be interesting, but after that, all servers would be readjusted and you would still have the same problem, some servers stomping others, aka lack of good distribution of people.

In the end, all systems show the same problem, NA playerbase wanting stacked servers which lead into boring and unfair matchups.
NA playerbase is the only one to blame.

bug forum (15 length limit)

Odokuro.5049:

4 Things on Your 4 Things:
- Even though one Trait is considered “Better” doesn’t mean people won’t use it, and in a place like WvW where a lot of things can be blocked, who wouldn’t take a skill that has a 6s CD and inflicts 12k to 15k DMG.

Scepet trait is never chose no matter what CD reduction you can have. Why? First because it only affects on 2 skills which already have low CD while Ineptitude can be activated through many sources. But second because the speed boost is bugged.
So now, stop putting ourselves into the dreaming world, and face the reality, which is a CD of 8s.

Odokuro.5049:

- The skill’s animation is pretty instant, so good luck seeing it before your skill/attack gets blocked, and a 6s window with everything else going on in the fight, isn’t big enough for someone cleave through 25k HP, while cleansing, while dodging/evading, while moving out of Condi-pits, while trying to find the real, nearly perma-invis Mesmer who can slap you with a few conditions and stay in Stealth while you bust your CD’s in the hopes of living against 12k Torments, and 5-6k Burns, ect.

The skill animation is pretty instant if the mesmer is good enough to activate just before you land a kit on him, which he should be rewarded. But a lot of times mesmers activate so you fall in it. In this case, you have enough time to see the animation and stop doing the attack.
About the rest, if you pretend to win, you need to be able to dodge, cleanse, stop attacking, attaking, controlling you character and the enemy at the same time. If you cannot do it, all this complains lose their value, since there’s a more predominant fact, lack of skill and a l2p issue.

Odokuro.5049:

- Yeah, “Not moving”, doesn’t work so well in WvW, don’t know if you where serious about this one or not.

You have 12s to stop moving at a point. There’s plenty of time. The problem is people don’t care about what they have and are locked into a mechanical playstyle.

Odokuro.5049:

- How many cleanses do you think people have? Even choosing traits that reduce skills that strip conditions, the rate at which those same conditions can be re-applied, is frustrating as heck.

People run just a fraction of condi cleansing they should have, and that’s the reason why they fail so much.
At roaming, you need to bring as much condi cleansing as you need. Anything else is just your decision to not to care about bringing defenses against the most dangerous source of damage there. It’s your problem and it’s your fault if you die against condies when you don’t care about it.
And here there’s no excuses. There’s 3 ways of passive defense against condies (food, runes and sigils), and all proffessions have, at least, 3 other sources of condi cleansing. There’s no excuse on dying from conditions when having such amount of condi cleansing sources.

Odokuro.5049:

I remember when Condition builds was all about beating someone through attrition, having to have not only solid Condi-dmg, but the ability to stick in the fight, and have the survivability to do so. Now it’s just so hands off, that once you apply conditions you can sit back and just worry about moving around and dodging something, and re-apply those conditions directly after they are cleansed.

You can do that because people don’t care to cleanse them. But when you face someone who knows how to deal with condi, I can assure you it’s one of a hell of a fight.
And some of them were able to deal massive damage. You know something called Confusion glamour build?

Btw, you referring scepter #2 as a 12s skill means you’re counting the mesmer running the +40% food, but you’re not using the -40%.
In what world do you thing you have a valid point when you fail miserably at such a basic thing like reducing the damage at least 40%?

So, in the end, if scepter #2 hit you for 12k is because you let it to hit it, it’s a l2p issue. It’s your fault when with just 2 passive tricks and some smart active defenses you can negate around 60-90% of that damage.

How wrong you are.

It is factual, because Glicko doesn’t determinate anything. It’s just a representation of what is happening.
Your first point is blatantly wrong. If a lower server should not be able to win an upper server, then what’s the point of the competition? In all sports or games, there’s always the possibility that a much weaker team can win a much stronger one.
And since WvW rating is determinated mostly by coverage, if a server loses it for any reason, it will drop.

It is truthful because, again, it’s a representation of the reality. The only one to blame for the servers having their rating padded is the playerbase, specially the NA playerbase who has always decided to stack massively into 3/4 servers.
Look at EU and how little differences there are between compared to NA. There’s more difference between 4th and 5th in NA than 1st and 9th in EU.
This is not a problem of Glicko or how WvW is designed, but NA players wanting very stacked server, so they’re the only ones to blame for such stagnation and differences.

And it is by no means biased, since it’s just maths representing what is happening. Again, the ones to blame for servers in NA to not be able to go up or down is NA playerbase, for wanting that for months.
In EU it’s much easier to do it because we spread more along all servers.

About the system win-up lose-down, in reality it is worse, because you’d end up having very unfair matchups. It happened when they made more freely the glicko, and quickly there were tons of people asking to a more locked system, since what was happening was not fun, one week you were stomped by a server and in the next you stomped another week.