Guild Wars 2

Justin, as strange as it may sound, I really feel particle effects being over the top are holding back viewers. Some things are just so ‘flashy’ like sigil of fire, nades, many guardian/ele skills, that trying to spectate fights, is just so tiresome. Let’s not even bring up the petting zoo…

I think many skills really need to be evaluated and toned by quite a bit, just to make it easier to both play and watch. May not be much of a priority to the pvp team, but still is worth noting.

How about:

Diamond Skin - Remove conditions when you attune to a specific element.

Fire – Burn/Torment
Water – Poison/Chill
Air – Confusion/Cripple
Earth – Bleeds/Immob

Gives 30 earth eles a decent way to remove condi’s constantly based on strategic play. At the same time condi builds have counter play as they have to react to the way the is attuning, similar to a power build timing a burst against an ele who has just left water.

Hello again Chris,

I won’t re-iterate my thoughts on the nature of the storyline as others put this so much more eloquantly than I could. I would rather bring up two concerns I have with the overall presentation:

Implimentation of new ideas is far too focused on LS only

The living story constantly adds new things, which for the lack of a better term, are simply awesome. A full scale map invasion? A new area with actual difficult group fights (well some were) and challenging single player content up top? A new cityish map with unique currencies, travel methods and activities? Sounds great, until they the materilization is realized.

Invasions
Logging in after this patch and seeing Bloodcoast Tide under full invasion was such a surprise. We had WVW commanders and PVE players working together, small groups and larger zergs. Until the realization hit – why was this scarlet’s minions? Why not pirates or Risen, something which made sense for that zone? Sure, it was exciting and interesting to see the mechanic, but it seemed so… detached.. from the rest of the game? What happened to the beautiful open world with persistent events relevant to that map and the lore of the game?

Can you imagine the awe a new player would be in if they just started, running around Queensdale completing events then suddenly there were cries from NPC’s as the centaurs were actually invading. Truly moving in large forces, with central event points like scarlets invasion, but actually tied to the map. Waypoints suddenly contested and the people on the map had to do something about it. The map actually had a meaning, not just a place for killing things to level and farming champions. And the reason – a number of event chains regarding centaurs in other maps (Hirathi, Kessex) which escalated the random chance of an invasion happening in the humans starting world, or atleast in Kessex which would then push if left unresolved. No big yellow text, no announcement, actual dynamic world changes… totally based on your current tech and what you have implemented already… but something which made sense with your lore.

Gaunlet

Similar with this. Actual solo player content that is somewhat challengning, but then is removed after a month. Why? What is wrong with leaving that there.

Every month there could be new bosses to fight, or atleast swap Liadri out for something different. At random days a special gambit could be added – nothing advertised in patch notes, that if you complete it you get some awesome award – but it’s truely difficult and limited to only a day. But as it’s random, it could come back later.

Again, this would added constant content, based on your current tech with little needed to grow other than designing a new boss every month and adding a function to randomly add a new gambit every so often.

As a player, it’s so depressing to see your team come out with such good ideas, then throw then away for the next grind collection next month. So much of the living story is based around interesting ideas that have been rendered outside of what this world is meant to be – atleast based on my understanding. I could go over half the living world updates with similar points but I think this should highlight it enough.

Rewards

A lesser problem but still an annoyance. When you complete the meta acheivements you often get a single use skin, such as the dragon wings in Dragonbash. Even after the amount of work some of these meta events require, the skin is locked to a single character – and you can only use it in pve or pvp. Not both.

Can we consider having these as unlocks instead? So if you complete it, you ‘unlock’ the reward you can then use later on a different character or in multiple game modes. I carry around multiple sets of gear on my mesmer for open world/dungeons/wvw/commanding, being able to only use a skin once given the necessity of build variety, isn’t cool. Make these unlocks like Zenith weapons.

Also, many of these rewards are things like the baloon or torch which to many characters, are of no use. So we either have to put them in a storage tab, taking up space or throw them away – which is bad. Having a bank tab for living story stuff would be nice, so if you don’t want/need something you can store it in a way which isn’t so inconvenient.

tldr; awe is lost when interesting things are tied down by living story and constantly removed instead of being intergrated into the overall world.

Thanks for your communication as usual Chris.

infantrydiv.1620:

A trait like Diamond Skin is poorly designed… A cooler trait idea might be an Earth GM trait that reads

Immune to burning while attuned to fire
Immune to blind while attuned to air
Immune to chill while attuned to water
Immune to bleed while attuned to earth

This would promote active play: say you’re been chased by a shortbow 1 spamming spirit ranger? switch to earth and negate a huge chunk of his damage. It also would promote active play by opponents and it would be definitely worthy of a GM trait

That sounds so awesome.

Revealed (overall mechanic) – 4s in pvp, 3s in wvw/pve.

Angelica Dream.7103:

I was toying with the idea to setting up a condition/precision build using Sup rune of Tormenting with a sup sigal of tormenting. Thoughts?

I read on a bug post that the tormenting runes don’t give the +45% duration to the scepter 2 block, which is our main source of torment.

Regretably condi specs are not so great in pve, especially mesmer. With a staff focused build, rabid/rampager gear you can put out decent pressure, but in world boss/dungeon situations power builds will be better. No harm in trying though if that’s what you want.

JonPeters.5630:

I think we have a pretty good understanding of the mesmer scepter auto attack problem. I would really like to design a chain of auto attacks here that end with something good, and then allow the clones generated from scepter to also do that thing. That being said, we are trying to avoid just condition spam overload with that weapon because that would be greatly compounded by clones spamming as well.

Understood, thanks as usual Jon. Sounds like quite a mission to pull off though, as you have a lot to balance.

Don’t forget the mesmer community here is really friendly compared to some of the other class forums, and would always be happy to give ideas or feedback.

Mesmer torch phantasm really needs some love. It doesn’t fit into phantasm builds as the damage is too low. It doesn’t fit into lock down or mantra builds as it doesn’t work with either. Torch is only used in shatter builds and condi builds for the 4 skill, the phantasm can be ignored (unless you trait for torch and need the extra condi removal).

- The cooldown of 30s is much higher than other phantasms
- The damage is too low knowing the actual effect
- The effect on enemies is just 3s of confusion for 3s, this is medicore in pvp and almost useless in pve.
- Because it doesn’t hit an enemy more than once, it often results in giving itself 3s of retal, which is almost worthless on a phantasm.

Changing the attack to randomly apply chill/burn/torment, making it able to hit the same target more than once (currently bugged?) and reducing the CD would bring it in line with the other phantasms (20s base). At the moment, it’s better to have a staff clone up in a condi build, which is strange as clones shouldn’t be better than phantasms.

Jon, are you guys aware of the issues with this phantasm? Any ideas on addressing it?

Hi Jon,

A little clarity on the issues with the scepter auto attack:

1) It’s too slow. The third part of the chain is slower than the other stages. The projectile is slow. The chain doesn’t progress until it the projectile hits. It’s just too slow.
2) The clones are useless. They do nothing but stand there and use a useless attack.
3) By using the auto attack, said clones then overwrite actually useful clones (staff/sword) and worse, phantasms. This means, in a phantasm or staff condi build using the auto attack can often reduce your sustained dps. I can understand you guys not wanting to make auto attacks strong so we don’t have even more classes like rangers spamming 1, but to make the auto attack so functionally weak that it is almost wrong to use it… that is a problem.

The ‘tricky’ mindset is fundamentally holding this weapon back. Confusing mob AI or making players wonder what is going on seems a strange focus for the auto attack. Please just reconsider this alltogether, the only synnergy it has is with clone death traits – but the replacement of decent clones with scepter clones and how slow this is makes it not worth it.

People have been asking to make the chain more efficient (attack rate) and add a condition to the third part of the chain so the clones are not useless. The additional DPS from a single condition applied from a third part of the chain will not be high. The main point is adding a benefit to the clones.

Can I also point out a couple of other points that are not responded to:

- iMage (torch phantasm) is almost a waste of a skill. 3s of confusion is useless in PVE, in pvp it is mediocre and no where near the damage of other phantasms. Staff clones apply more pressure. The retail isn’t exactly game breaking.
- Scepter 3 is really awkward to hit. This is due to the beam requiring a ‘charge’ up time, before the channeled attack hits. This combination of a charge up with a channel makes it really awkward, especially for such a long attack.
- The cooldown on Blinding Befuddlement is too long. 5s cooldown, on a master trait, for only a 4s confusion, when mesmers can’t spam blinds, is just bad.
- Staff projectile is too slow. In PVE you can barely hit mobs with this by the time other players have allready killed them. The attack rate is fine, but the projectile speed needs a buff.
- We need some sort of out of combat boost. A movement signet for example. Having to equip focus – which is situational at best, for swiftness is not cool. We may have good in combat mobility but out side of it, it’s just so painful.
- Phantasmal haste doesn’t work. It’s supposed to reduce phantasm attack rates by 20% but in reality it doesn’t reduce some at all.

Signet mesmer is unlikely to happen due to the nature of our signets – apart from Domination they are all situational, and midnight is medicore at best.

Dear Anet,

When I go into PVP, I do it to fight other players. Not their traits. If I wanted to fight passive behavioral patterns, I would be running dungeons.

Please reconsider ‘immunities’ and passive power creep. This does not bring interesting or enjoyable elements to the game.

That is all. Thank you for reading.

From the other thread:

Roy Cronacher.1576:

vangedas.7358:

Diamond Skin

- this can be absurdly broken. Please, please, do not go with this. Not only pure passive immunity to conditions is very powerful, cheesy and and cannot be counter-played, but this new trait would literally kill specs like trap ranger, not to mention it would hurt necromancers.
Once again, do not go with this trait, it would be a huge mistake.

There actually is counter play to this trait unlike some other similar mechanics. The goal of the elementalist with this trait is to stay above 90% hit points while the counter play is to do a bit of physical damage to the elementalist to drop them below this threshold in order to get the conditions rolling on them, which will in turn help keep them below that threshold.

In SPvP an elementalist can reach a maximum of around 20,000-21,000 hit points. This means that 2100 would be the most damage you would need to do to an elementalist to break through this trait and in most cases it would be a lower amount than that. That is not very much damage needed to do in order to start applying conditions. This still leaves room for the elementalist using healing traits/skills and kiting to try to stay above that threshold to increase their survivability vs conditions.

We have been doing internal testing and it feels like it in a good place for a tier 3 trait. That being said though and as a reminder, none of these changes are set in stone yet and are subject to change.

Anet, please, why does this need to be condi immunity?

Why not make it -75% condi duration, so condis will still be applied and just last a very very short time within the conditional frame. Same with automated response and zerker stance – Jonathan I remember discussing this with you in the past but your notes don’t indicate any change to this.

Why is a passive trait designed to hard counter builds? Don’t you think there is something slightly wrong with balancing in this way?

Roy Cronacher.1576:

vangedas.7358:

Diamond Skin

- this can be absurdly broken. Please, please, do not go with this. Not only pure passive immunity to conditions is very powerful, cheesy and and cannot be counter-played, but this new trait would literally kill specs like trap ranger, not to mention it would hurt necromancers.
Once again, do not go with this trait, it would be a huge mistake.

There actually is counter play to this trait unlike some other similar mechanics. The goal of the elementalist with this trait is to stay above 90% hit points while the counter play is to do a bit of physical damage to the elementalist to drop them below this threshold in order to get the conditions rolling on them, which will in turn help keep them below that threshold.

In SPvP an elementalist can reach a maximum of around 20,000-21,000 hit points. This means that 2100 would be the most damage you would need to do to an elementalist to break through this trait and in most cases it would be a lower amount than that. That is not very much damage needed to do in order to start applying conditions. This still leaves room for the elementalist using healing traits/skills and kiting to try to stay above that threshold to increase their survivability vs conditions.

We have been doing internal testing and it feels like it in a good place for a tier 3 trait. That being said though and as a reminder, none of these changes are set in stone yet and are subject to change.

I think we need to have a serious discussion on the subject of ‘immunity’.

Firstly, it’s nice to see a mention of counter play, but I really think you are missing the point. Why does it need to offer imunity? Why not -80% condition duration? Then you could set it to 85% health and make it far more balenced as a GM trait. Do we really need passive immunity traits?

Secondly, why is automated response also perfect immunity? Why isn’t this -80%? That way condition builds could still impact the class, but it would be dramatically more difficult. Then as the actual conditional could be made more balenced.

This is where a lot of rage comes from. You guys totally overextend into passive or spammable aspects and don’t seem to understand why people get so angry about it. Passive traits should not be so strong as to block an entite build type when a conditional is met. Sure, you could stack condi’s on the engine when he is at 30% health, but that relies on him getting to 30% in the first place, also him not having a counter ready at that point.

Please, just change these traits and zerker stance to give a flat out reduction and not immunity. You are adding hard counters, based on passive traits. This is not balence. This is creating a rock-paper-siccors situation. This does not lead to fun or thoughtful gameplay.

FWIW, I don’t play a condi necro/ranger, my mains are mes and ele and use a variety of builds on both. I just get so frustrated seeing how these things go on and on without acknowledging the actual issue.

Edit; ‘Set in stone’. Nice pun. :P

Roy Cronacher.1576:

Damaskinos.1263:

Roy Cronacher.1576:

AgentChaos.4932:

good change to symbol of swiftness but can we have pure of voice removes 2 condi back?

I wouldn’t hold your breath waiting for that one.

• How is the change to symbol of Swiftness any good? So many classes move much faster then Guardians. If you want to nerf this, give us an Adept trait, that gives us flat 25% movement spead, like Warriors have it.

In many cases the symbol of swiftness change is actually a buff and not a nerf. Currently it will only apply the initial large portion of swiftness if the target does not currently have any swiftness on them. If they have swiftness on them or after that first pulse it will then add 1 second of swiftness per pulse. This is very awkward and clunky.

The change makes the spell apply a consistent 4 seconds of swiftness per pulse without the strange hidden mechanic. Basically. if you already have swiftness on the people which you using the symbol on or if you take the time to stand in the spell for the full duration then it will just be a buff. =)

Mesmer focus 4 (temporal curtain) has the same issue, it doesn’t apply swiftness if they have any on them. Will this possibly be fixed or changed to apply swiftness if they haven’t run through it allready?

Also, how many heartseekers will the init change allow to be spammed at once? 7? New thief meta incoming. :P

(I am a little concerned this will allow cloak and dagger spam to be even easier against mesmers and rangers due to pets being unable to dodge, let’s see how that turns out).

Firstly, thank you for these changes. Looking forward to it.

You are going to have to reconsider mesmer phantasm damage. This could allow some of these specs to put out so much damage, since IC is only 15 points now. That being said, it will also open up many new builds for mesmers which will be great.

Also, can we talk about condi immunity traits? Automated response and the new ele trait. Complete condi immunity shuts down builds, worse with how easy it is for an ele to spam heals. Why do these need to be complete immunity? What about 50% condi duration and buff the conditional? Same with zerker stance, pure immunity is too strong and needs to be reconsidered…

This post really made my day, thank you Jonathan and team. Looks like you guys are addressing some issues that have been around for a while. I think there is a mistake in your first ele line though ‘This was done by bringing up the base cooldown of attunements’. Don’t you mean brought down?

Ele:
- Looks good, some really interesting changes here. Trait variety and less arcane reliance has been a wish for so long.
- Earth XI – Diamond Skin. This is too much. Jonathan, there have been so many discussoin threads on the pvp forum about automated response being over the top as it is total immunity. This is the same. A single trait should not provide total immunity to conditions, even if it is situation. Please consider changing this to 50% condi duration while above 80% health or something. There are many builds in wvw that rely puerly on condi damage (rabid/dire gear), having a single trait being able to shut down builds is not right.

Engineers:
- Again, no change to automated response? A single trait should not be able to shut down a complete build.

Thief:
- These look interesting. Opening up more skill usage with better init regen. Though I do wonder about theives who spam 7 (?) heartseekers in a row now. That will be ammusing to watch.
- If this truely counters the 521 d/p spam troll spec in wvw, thank you. That was just silly.

Warrior
- No changes to healing signet or zerker stance? Are you waiting on the effect of the other changes to determine if they are too strong? There are some insane regen builds in wvw at the moment that will still be over the top with these changes.

Mesmer:
- IC change will open up so many new builds, thank you for this (and sorry for pestering you about it for months :P)
- Phantasm specs will be too strong. What this change means, is phantasm sepcs which had to put 25 into illusions can drop 10 points (as the 20% attack rate trait is bugged and doesn’t really work) and put 10 more points in dueling for more precision, crit damage and utility. This will mean even more damage. Please reconsider the overall phantasm damage, this is going to be too strong.

- Scepter auto attack needs to be buffed. The attack rate is too slow. The clones don’t do anything, just stand there and do their slow attack. Worse they overwrite useful clones (staff = applies condi, sword = vun + boon removal, GS = multi attacks). The attack rate/projectile rate needs to be buffed a little and the clones changes so they actually do something – 1 stack of torment/confusion/poison (2-3 seconds) would help. Or make it so the third attack of the chain transfers a condi from you/the clone to an opponent.
- Phantasmal mage (torch 5) needs a rework, this skill is often just horrible. 3s of confusion is medicore even in condi specs. 3s of retal on bounce doesn’t mean a lot. It’s bounce can only hit a single target once. Staff clones actually do more damage than this phantasm does, which is really bad. Changing it to apply chill, burning, torment or something else on bounce and a different effect when it hits allies would be much better (or even a random condi on hit, can bonce to same target more than once).
- Staff Winds of Chaos (skill 1) projectile is too slow. This weapon is not effective in pve as it takes so long to hit an opponent, in open world PVE with other players around, the opponent is dead before it hits them. Please reconsider this.

A couple of things in general to consider:
- Condi specs need some love in PVE. This is mainly due to bleed limits, only being able to apply 1 stack of poison/burning. Also confusion is almost useless in pve due to mobs attacking so slowly. Adding individual placement for burning/poison would be a start (so each player can have their own poison/burn). Double confusion duration in PVE only. Change bleeds so 25 stacks adds a ‘deep bleed’ buff which does a lot of damage per tick and then removes the bleed stacks.
- Perplexity runes. 6th skill needs an ICD. Strongest rune set in the game, stronger than most Mesmer interrupt traits.
- Revealed should be 4s in wvw to bring it in line with pvp….
- Retal needs to be reconsidered, as it can proc multiple times of a single attack (engines nades for example) which can lead to some specs not being playable in wvw due to retal. Change it to one trigger per attack. Passive tank builds shouldn’t rely on a boon for significant damage.

Thank you so much for sharing these changes and making an effort to balence some of these things!

I wondered about this, having the pets as a buff rather than a minion, but wouldn’t that remove the counterplay in killing the spirits? Especially for the elite.

Making the particle mess go away would be nice (even if spirits do look cool). Reconsidering the additional passive damage would be nice, as something would have to be changed if the counterplay changed. Maybe more about utility? The traits would also have to change, which gets to the point that it seems like too much work for Anet to consider… Also if it was a buff on the pet, wouldn’t it make it less reliable if pets ai was being odd?

Regarding the ranger depth, wouldn’t that be fixed by allowing ranger pets to be controlled more? Though we know how anet reacts to that and fire attument eles…

Thanks for the update Grouch.

Grouch, are you aware that mini games are also giving rank/glory…

Also seems to count towards daily top stats in pvp daily…

It’s supposed to be unblockable but isn’t, so if they are blocking it fails.

That being said, it does fail at random times for no noticeable reason. This has been reported months ago but still no fix.

I just finished a game of crab toss for the daily (didn’t win, came in in the last minute) and at the end I got the usual 1 daily achievement point, but then it popped saying I got x glory. Didn’t notice exactly how much due to a number of popups… though thought this was strange.

So started a new game, scored half the total score of the top player. Upon finishing, I received a total of 112 glory and 112 rank points (based on making a note of both before and after the game).

This means… mini games are current giving glory and rank points. Is this expected?

MatthewMedina.5419:

This change has actually been needed since launch. As noted, we’ve already been using these difficulty mobs in content, though in a more limited way. That was due primarily to the fact that both species ended up being named “Veteran”, but one was solo-friendly, the other was not, and all it did was cause confusion. There will be more updates in the future to bring the rest of the species at this difficulty level in line with this change.

Are the drop rates/loot tables the same as the normal veterans?

Let Devon know, I’m sure he’ll have Constable Seigerazer gather them up and thrown then in Stomemist Prison.

DevonCarver.5370:

Waypoints are being evaluated currently. There will be changes to that aspect of WvW that we look at in the upcoming tests. Based on how that works out, we would then move any of those changes into the live game once they had been tested. We aren’t discussing the specifics just yet, until the test is live.

Devon, a while back (atleast 4 months) a developer said the waypoint becoming uncontested for 1-2 seconds as the event refreshes was a bug and was to be fixed shortly, but this didn’t occur. Is this behavior intentional?

Daishi.6027:

Asuka Shikinami.5462:

I spent 100 laurels on that damm kitten tonic, only to be outplayed by this constant power creep.

Talk about the usual lack of balance. Do you even costume brawl Anet!?!

Devs don’t care, Costume brawl has been abandoned.

All the top brawling teams have already quit. #costumebrawlfailedswapesports2013

I spent 100 laurels on that damm kitten tonic, only to be outplayed by this constant power creep.

Talk about the usual lack of balance. Do you even costume brawl Anet!?!

Prismatic condi mesmer. 20 points in domination gives good defense from cripples and torch cooldown, 30 points in chaos gives condition on clone death to counter/cleaving, boosts stealth and gives random boons when stealthed. You can normally beat warriors by controlling the fight and slowly wearing them down. Staff clones + scepter-torch 2/3/4 help. Doom sigils mean constant poison uptime. Requires a lot of patience and knowing how to react though.

Build used less in pvp though due to little burst (constant condi pressure rather than condi burst) and less team utility than most mesmer specs. Very strong 1v1 though.

Mesmer phantasm specs work, but can still be countered by killing the phantasms quickly then pressuring the mesmer (phantasms are really squishy). Depends on how aware the warrior is of mesmer playstyle.

What it’s good at (offensive range) it does very very well.

Staff can be used on zerker, either shatter (20/20/0/0/30 or 0/20/20/0/30) or phantasm spec, specifically for getting huge numbers from the phantasm (I hit 16k during the gauntlet and that wasn’t full glass)… but the weapon in that case is used more for setting up damage from the class mechanics rather than a lot of damage coming from your immediate attacks. Play around with them both and see what you like more, Nevhie’s videos may give you some ideas for GS.

Hexxen.7216:

Having the staff hit people it goes through on top of the fact that it bounces would make it OP wither you think so or not. Group fights have everyone piled around together extremely close thus you would get full effect of the bounces and then the passing through people. That would be crazy strong.

Not necessarily. The attack does a small amount of damage with a 33% chance to proc vun and a 66% chance to proc a condition (which both do the same amount of damage). The overall damage is only equal to the straight damage given by the greatsword with full condi spec. At that point, skill 2/3/4 on GS are still better for team fights, staff 5 is generally better but GS 5 is also decent.

It would have the same limit 3/4 of hits it can target as GS 1/Scepter 3. The bounce is less relevant as it bounces to the nearest target – so it would not pass through anything. The change does not make it fundamentally stronger for team fights compared to our other weapons, but it does offer a balance to bring potential variety to the class and weapon.

Chrhal.4983:

Have you considered that the staff was designed for something else than “just tagging mobs” and ArenaNet want to keep it that way?

I don’t think any weapon in the game is designed to be for tagging, though guardian staff auto attack is questionable. The fact is, it is a weakness of mesmers in open field compared to other classes, the weakness is not a result of ‘designing the weapon to not be for ’tagging’ but in the base design of the weapon. Requesting a basic change to the projectile speed, to make it balanced with other classes for open world pve, is not game breaking. The second request potentially is, but that’s for anet to decide based on their own metrics and our feedback, all I am doing is stating a problem and presenting solutions.

Greatsword is great for tagging mobs in open world PVE due to the auto attack hitting multiple targets and 3/4/5 having AOE aspects. Sword is good due to cleaving and 2 hitting frequently. Scepter is hopeless, but that won’t change until the auto attack is change. The big letdown though is the staff.

The problem is, the auto attack is just… so… slow. The actual projectile. By the time you hit something at 1000 range, in open world PVE with others around the mob is normally dead. Skill 2/4 are more defensive orientated. While the phantasm on 3 hits for a lot of damage, he is only single taret. Chaos storm is nice AOE, but it has a long cooldown so isn’t reliable for tagging.

Suggestions:

- Make the projectile speed faster. Not the attack rate, just the projectile speed. Make it as faster as the projectile from sword 4 (the daze). Then it will actually hit something.

- Make the projectile from Winds Of Chaos hit targets its passes through. Similar to the greatsword auto attack (max 3/4 hits). This way it can tag mobs a little easier and give the staff more of a use in open world PVE. I do not think this would have a major effect in pvp, maybe make it a little better at hitting pet classes. In WVW it would be a buff for group fights, which is good as the staff is lacking in it’s ability to hit multiple targets. This would also suit the ‘chaotic’ winds theme of the staff. This would not be OP combined with the bounces as the total range of the initial attack + bounce seems capped at 1200, also it’s unreliable exactly what it would bounce to (this is balanced with the GS hitting 3 times near instantly).

These are simple changes which would open up the weapon more for open world pve and bring it up to scratch with greatsword/sword. While staff is brilliant for pvp, it is lacking outside of this, and outside of situations where the additional defense is required or getting large numbers with the phantasm, there is little reason to use staff over greatsword in pve. Plese fix this Anet.

Banner is pretty meta defining in WVW, as it’s the only revive skill which revives NPC’s (so a single warrior with stances can rev a keep lord, have a few warriors alternating and they can chain it indefinitely). Any change would have to be pvp only.

It’s still a very strong skill though. Maybe just tag banner in team chat just befor eyou place it if your not on voice chat first so they know not to run (ctrl – click is quickest way).

The entire game isn’t based around doing as much damage as you can in dungeons. The utility provided by runes is often far more useful than the stat increase.

While some rune sets are noticeably weaker, nearly every set would have some sort of use in a build in wvw or pvp. Anet have allready said they are working on improving the weaker sets.

In the patch preview their is a reference to a new healing skill which removes ‘toxin’. I presume the OP is wondering if this means there is a new condition, though it may be PVE specific.

Main mesmer changes (from memory anyway, apologies if I miss anything):

- Illusionary Celerity is now a grandmaster trait, so builds that didn’t have 25 in illusions have been hit, mainly in terms of utility. This was quite a big change.
- Blurred Frenzy has an extra 2 seconds CD and is a dodge, not invunerable. (retal triggers so you can take a lot of damage from that, also ele lightning shield now interrupts blurred)
- Focus pull (4) now has a short time delay between the placement and the pull.
- Traited iDuelist is no longer a 100% combo finisher.
- A few new traits added for interupts. Halting strike does more damage.
- Prismatic Understanding (chaos 30 stealth trait) applies one boon per second.
- Scepter block now applies 5 stacks of torment (new condi, 75% of a bleed tick, does double damage while target moves) and the block damage was reduced to compensate.
- Chaos armor from staff 4 now longer auto applies protection. Chaos armor now works as intended and correctly applies all the boons/condis, with a 1s icd.
- Few bugfixes, still many annoying bugs though.

Necro’s were dominant for a while due to a burn proc trait which was slighly toned down in pvp only, but the condi spam is still tedious to deal with on a mesmer. Mesmers were used less as a result, for example no mesmers in PAX finals, only 1 (Helseth) in MLG. Warriors sustain overbuffed and now have crazy passive regen as well as the usual mobility, mesmers counter them well atleast.

As a mesmer, I would love to see this removed and replaced with a elite transform or phantasm or some sort of buff for your clones/phantasms (like Rampage As One). In PVE it’s sort of pointless. In wvw/pve its a short duration lockdown on a single target and gives them tools to escape easily. It looks good on paper, but is often a waste other than for spiking someone or locking down a troll spec thief.

Though I will admit, it is amusing when someone turns you into a moa then you kill them while in moa form. The attacks actually do decent damage….

1) More frequent balence patches/actual class balance.
2) Game modes
3) PVE rewards/xp for playing pvp.

1) Lack of skill based rewards. Most decent skins/items all based around grinding. Things like Liadri should award ascended gear, not spam auto attack at Tequatil situations. Ways to get ascended gear far too limited and all based on grind. Same with precusors.
2) Condi specs have far too much disadvantage in pve. Especially with confusion being medicore and bleed stacks so low. Level 3 moa has the same bleed stack limit as Teq isn’t cool.
3) Drop rates far too low for mats. No way to actually farm or get T6 mats through quests or skill based achievements. Always grind for gold and TP what you want.

1) Stealth completely imbalanced in WVW. Should be 4s revealed like in PVP.
2) Class imbalance. Everything is balanced around pvp, when wvw has far more stats and factors. More so, many traits like duhmfire are nerfed in pvp for being too strong but left as is in wvw. This is unfair and promoted bad builds. Like perplexity spam.
3) Lack of rewards. Ascended accessories not available with badges. No ascended backpieces. Player kills worse rewards than mob kills. Bags of loot contain too much pointless T5 mats.

The Good (what you liked about the patch)

Condition floaters – these look awesome and make quick referencing ticks far easier.

Mesmer scepter buffs – as the weakest weapon mesmers have it’s nice to see a small reduction in CD’s. Certainly nothing major, but it’s nice to know Anet realized there is a problem.

Tooltips – People have been asking for this for a while so nice to see some clarity.

Bug fixes – Things like the para sigil finally being fixed and changing iDuelist so he can’t apply 8 stacks of confusion when traited helps reduce some silly builds.

The Bad (things about the patch you disliked)

How long we waited for this. Especially knowing the lack of changes…

The lack of QC… seriously, how did you miss the chaos storm bug. How was it not considered that if Leg Specialist didn’t have an ICD problems would occur? Every patch seems to bring something game breaking that wasn’t tested… Perplexity runes say ‘hi’.

Lack of actual balance. Particularly regarding warriors regen and mobility (even if you manage to get them low, they can escape far to easily). So much in the game still being based on passive/mindless spam. Things like burn procs need to go.

Immobilize stacking seems like a really bad idea. Ironically I noticed this when running around in pve – even in a level 15 zone mobs were able to chain immobilize and it started getting frustrating. This feels like one of those changes that you know, in a couple of weeks, someone is going to figure out a way to abuse and make the next cc spam perma immob build…

How much more annoying it will be in WVW when thieves can drop blinding powder into Black Powder for even more stealth. Stealth in wvw needs to be brought down, not buffed, it’s over the top as it is. I know this isn’t relevant for this section, but it’s another example of a change intended for pvp which will have consequences elsewhere…

The Missing (things you expected from the patch that weren’t there)

A more thorough attempt at bringing up the ele.

Mesmer scepter – while you said you are aware it’s weak and tried to bring it up, you completely missed the point. The problem with the scepter is the auto attack – it just is not effective. Sure, summoning a clone sounds nice on paper, but the clone is pointless, and in condi builds using your auto attack will often lower your sustain DPS. This needs to be changed – look at sword and staff clones as a point of reference in how they synergize with the weapon and play style, compared to the scepter which is lacking. Torch phantasm also needs to be reconsidered… seriously mediocre at the moment.

To the OP: practice using your stealth carefully and reacting to your opponent. Don’t blow your cooldowns, such as using phase retreat just to get a clone out, sometimes saving it that extra 2s to counter your opponents burst, or saving your decoy to when you know they are going to hit you with something you cannot dodge/escape from.

The amount of ageis you can get from Prismatic Understanding and Chaos Storm will really help, especially against glass thieves, who often fully focus on getting that backstab off. Scepter 2 while they are in stealth then dodge once you see the block message. You won’t be able to catch them if they run, but if you time your CD’s right, you should have no issues. Glassy warriors are over buffed at the moment due to anet giving them such huge sustain, just take note of their animations and keep yourself safe while slowly wearing them down. Clone death traits often help against warriors due to the huge cleaving attacks. Glassy engines are all about that burst, try to avoid the immobilize and make them waste the burst on a clone (watch the vulnerability, this is where a lot of the damage comes from). Condi spam necros can be difficult if they are good, you have to use your stealths carefully to prevent their main skills getting you. Mesmers are a pain, but as a mesmer you will know what to avoid and deal with.

Pryo; I found against phantasm mesmers to keep staff clones up and let the winds of chaos bounces kill their phantasms. It isn’t exactly reliable, but if you can avoid the burst and keep the situation under control it helps. A phantasm/lockdown hybrid build would be tedious though.

Toughness also benefits illusions as they gain your toughness. Vitality doesn’t scale at all with illusions. In this way toughness helps keep your clones up meaning they can inflict more damage.

Currently using rabid weapons/armor and some hybrid (condi main, toughness/vit minor with a small amount of precision) ascended trinkets for the extra health, simply to help with the condi meta. Rabid is defintly dominant.

On a side note, I know the feeling. Friend asked me to teach them how to play mesmer, scheduled for a couple of hours later and in the meantime someone told them carrion was the best set for mesmer… so they came in full carrion exotics without knowing anything about the class… worse they wanted to learn shatter…

Remove burning procs. Too much damage for RNG that is often unavoidable unless you block/dodge every auto attack – even for a short proc it does so much additional damage or forces you to clear it wasting a cleanse.

Reconsider the synergy that allows you to apply a lot of conditions very quickly. This is similar to the quickness/steal nerfs to tone down theif burst a little, but for condi damage.

Tone down CC. Especially with the change to immobilize, I fear someone will come up with some crazy immobilize spam build that will lock down the meta even further…

Kaleban.9834:

Rather than insulting and threatening the players, wouldn’t it be far simpler, and more hilarious, to just add the regular list of suspects when it comes to “insulting words” to the profanity filter?

I can just imagine entire paragraphs full of nothing but the word “kitten” the next time “a player feels” ANet mucked up on balancing or failed to deliver on a promise. Yes, “a player feels” makes it sound less confrontational, but also takes away the impact of the criticism, and simply sounds silly and redundant.

It would be amusing, but the filters interfere too much as it is. Every major patch the release notes contain some note about balancing kittens.

Regina Buenaobra.6193:

Asuka Shikinami.5462:

On the other note, the amount of mistakes, condescending comments and trigger happy responses from the black post mods at times is disappointing. There have been plenty of times I have seen threads closed when they were not doing any harm or worse, when developers were posting and discussing things with users…

If you want to achieve a better community environment, it needs to come from both sides and ensuring those mods treat customers with respect. Sure, a game forum harbors negative attitudes, but Chris’s posts from last week are defiantly an improvement. Look at my post history for example – I was ‘infracted’ for posting a thread saying that on my server, gold sellers had gotten around your flood control and had been spamming for hours on end even after being reported frequently. The entire mapchat was, for hours, gold seller spam. My thread was infracted and deleted for including an image as proof that it was occuring. How is that supposed to make someone feel? They go out of their way to try to let you know a problem and that is how your mods respond? Even if including a picture was bad in their eyes, removing it would have taken far less time than it does to delete a thread/infract/post notification etc.

Common respect goes both ways. Posting ‘you have been warned’ does not exemplify a respectful or mature environment. Please don’t ban me for having an opinion. I go out of my way to try to help you guys out (I made the original suggestion for the way of gathering feedback on the forum Chris said they are looking to implement), but sometimes trying to be calm and respectful is hard with the nature of how your mods treat people…

It is explicitly against the forum Code of Conduct to report in-game violations on the forums. While we appreciate the assistance, reports about gold sellers should go through the proper channels, through Customer Support, and not on the forums. Forum moderators are not able to ban gold sellers from the game. I understand that it can be upsetting to receive a warning when you were just trying to help. We need to keep the forums clean so that discussion can take place and it’s not disrupted by reports that don’t belong there. I’m sorry that you were upset, but it is the moderators’ role to remove threads that go against the Code of Conduct. Providing a warning to forum users is just a heads-up to not do it again.

I won’t argue with you regarding that specific scenario, even if I disagree I understand where you are coming from and respect your opinion, but the premise of my post remains. That ‘you have been warned’ remark is condescending and removes the ‘we want to make this a better community’ tone of the post and changes it to ‘group think incoming, prepare yourself children’.

Also, in said example thread, a moderator posting saying “Thank you for the report, we are aware of gold sellers and will close this off now. If you notice further gold sellers, please report in game as we cannot ban via the forums” would just be so much more pleasant and far better communication… isn’t that your goal in the first place…

Danicia, you really should remove that last line from the post. From the perspective of a casual observer, it almost sounds like you are trying to pick a fight with people. Don’t underestimate the Streisand effect… if people can’t communicate here, in an environment you have some control over, they will go elsewhere and you will not be able to control that.

On the other note, the amount of mistakes, condescending comments and trigger happy responses from the black post mods at times is disappointing. There have been plenty of times I have seen threads closed when they were not doing any harm or worse, when developers were posting and discussing things with users…

If you want to achieve a better community environment, it needs to come from both sides and ensuring those mods treat customers with respect. Sure, a game forum harbors negative attitudes, but Chris’s posts from last week are defiantly an improvement. Look at my post history for example – I was ‘infracted’ for posting a thread saying that on my server, gold sellers had gotten around your flood control and had been spamming for hours on end even after being reported frequently. The entire mapchat was, for hours, gold seller spam. My thread was infracted and deleted for including an image as proof that it was occuring. How is that supposed to make someone feel? They go out of their way to try to let you know a problem and that is how your mods respond? Even if including a picture was bad in their eyes, removing it would have taken far less time than it does to delete a thread/infract/post notification etc.

Common respect goes both ways. Posting ‘you have been warned’ does not exemplify a respectful or mature environment. Please don’t ban me for having an opinion. I go out of my way to try to help you guys out, but sometimes trying to be calm and respectful is hard with the nature of how your mods treat people…

JonathanSharp.7094:

I think the description needs to be worked on. Already talked w/ the other balance guys about this, we’ll look at it again!

Thanks Jonathan. May want to have a look at Automated Response as well.

Have No Faith In Me.1840:

^ “X amount of condi-time” minus 100% is 0

14 – 100% is 0

9 – 100% is 0

9999999 – 100% is 0

Oh no, 8 seconds of not being able to face spam conditions on the warrior? =[

So + condi duration is essentially a isolated function from – condi duration? That seems odd, regardless thank you for the response.

JonathanSharp.7094:

It’s already fixed.

The build should be shipping to live as I type this.

Woah, your on the ball with replies today Jonathan. Nice job.

If the balance team is reading this, is it also possible to inquire what the actual change was? The patch notes said this was to make Chaos Storm from the falling trait in the Chaos line the same as Staff 5, but what was the actual difference? I never noticed a difference…