Guild Wars 2

Too much living world.

These two week temporary content roll outs are draining. If this was permanent – or even if just world 1 was now permanent it would be better. But having to rush to complete something, often in a buggy state, isn’t exactly fun for a lot of people.

The “can’t farm” point is true as well… farming champs is likely more rewarding than the original skin grab.

Having Valk, Shamans and Knights amulets give different stats from same name gear used in the rest of the game is confusing for new players. These should have been called something different… Also celestial amulet seems a lot less worthwhile stat wise compared other amulets to PVE celestial gear….

But yeah, more customization or making the jewell more meaninfull (even amulet = 2/3 stats, jewell = 1/3 stats) would be far more interesting and may actually promote more build variety

Azure Prower.8701:

We’re in for a long week.

I was watching the map waiting but you never managed to take all of our (ebay) camps! It was close though, nice job.

Good luck to all this week, hope there are plenty of good fights… or arrowcarts if you swing that way…

Sli Fi.7980:

The problem with WvW is that I have to find people to group with to have any fun + success. I don’t have to do that with sPvP (I can just join a random team there). I find joining a zerg to be completely uninteresting farming.

I think the new LFG tool has wvw options… that may help.

Also thread +1

Small balence suggestions:

Mesmer:
- The simple way to improve build variety is either to move Illusionary Celarity to a lower tier to remove it all together and lower CD’s to compensate. This change messes with a number of builds and makes CD’s between shatter builds and non shatter builds lopsided for a lot of things that it shouldn’t – like sword 3 and 4. Please just consider looking into this or discussing it with us, there have been so many useful threads on the mes section which have been ignored. As you no doubt know from this thread, communication is key…
- Damage log needs to show phantasm damage, but not clone damage. It’s tedious testing different builds and setups when you can’t monitor phantasm damage. I presume rangers and necros have the same issue.
- A few bugs really mess with build variety, such as phantasmal haste not working properly (doesn’t reduce attack periods correctly for most phantasms), Illusionary Elasticity not affecting staff clones but other clones, etc.
- Arcane theivary CD is too high, and null field pulses take too long.
- The inspiration line in general is a mess.
- The ways to increase phantasm health are bad. A trait for +20% health is a joke (that’s like 600 more health….). Signet at 50% means they survive one more auto attack… it’s not worth giving up a utility skill for that.

Ele
- Conjures are such a good idea, but annoying due to the double restriction (timer and usage charge). This is also not newbie friendly. Please considering morphing these into one single restriction.
- Scepter 1 and 2 in water seems out of place.
- Focus needs love. There are little situations this is better than offhand dagger.

Stealth
- When someone exits stealth (not reveladed, just times out) add a 1 second revealed. This will make monitoring stealth more important and prevent Cloak And Dagger spam on pets (Mesmers/Rangers/Necro’s can dodge your CnD, but our pets can’t, it gives a huge advange to offhand dagger thieves).
- If someone makes an attack in stealth and it is blocked, it procs a 1s revaled. This makes managing stealth and positioning more valuable instead of just spamming backstab.

I don’t think these changes will break theives/mesmers, but will force many players to think about what they are doing with stealth more instead of just spamming it.

Bouncing attacks
- PVE focused here. If you use theif shortbow on a single mob and there are others nearby (yellows) it will hit them and aggro them. This means you are constantly aggro’ng other mobs by accident. Same with mesmer staff and ele staff air 1. Please look into the way these hit.

WVW
- There are a few skills in WVW which scale a little too well with power, and likewise can pull huge numbers. Can I suggest toning these down a little. Eviserate, Killshot, Backstab are examples. Even if wvw is your ‘casual mode’, the scaling with new ascended gear is a little too high on some skills and allows far too quick burst with some classes. Not a global nerf, just a change so these are less brutal in wvw.

Thank you for reading ( you are reading this anet right.. right… /Overly Attached Balencer )

Firstly, Dev’s this is an awesome inititive, and in light of recent ‘leaks’ is really productive to the community. Please keep it up!

Secondly, why October the 15th? First we were told it would be the patch in the next couple of days, then start of October… now October 15th? That’s a long time since the last balence patch.

Thirdly, ele’s have 5 conjure weapons, not 4. I presme you mean that non-elites, as GS is quite useful (atleast for running!).

Lastly, you didn’t really mention any nerfs here… which is good for a thread like this, but I still hope you are considering toning down a couple of things which are a little too much at the moment.

- My WVW build isn’t possible, due to a lack of gear combinations. Having to completely redesign is tedious. This may seem silly to some, but if you are used to playing in a particular way then having to change that as a game mode restricts you, it’s often easier just to avoid that mode.
- Point control is boring.
- Fighting on small points is horrible. The camera constantly does odd things. Atleast in WVW you have more open space. The top point in Kylo and Skyhammer in general is bad for this.
- Doesn’t help with PVE at all. I’m not talking about getting some massive reward, but trying to learn an alt in pvp, then having to go to PVE and level them to 80 separately for wvw is tedious. Just give us exp and a small amount of silver/karma to make it somewhat balanced.
- No deathmatch, or interesting game modes. Again, conquest in this implementation is boring.

I used to PVP, but sort of stopped… no motivation. WVW roaming and small man fights are far more interesting and punish mistakes more. Occasionally go to there to test builds, little other reason anymore.

The combat log numbers seem higher than expected, but I wont comment as I don’t know French and exactly what skill did what. I will answer the question about what to do when fighting theives, if you are serious in wanting to counter them this so do for a rabid mesmer build.

As for this situation, switch Signet of Inspiration to Decoy. If you know the thief is about to hit you with a backstab, use scepter 2 to block – most thieves don’t recognize he block animation and still try to backstab. Then once you see the ‘block’ text, DODGE IMMEDIATLY. If you have clone dodge on, it helps a lot.

If the thief opens with basi and catches you off guard, immediately use decoy, not blink, dodge then heal. You will be back at decent health. Then keep 3 clones up and keep pressure up.

I presume your other weapon is staff? If you think you will be caught, cast Chaos Storm on yourself, it will mess with the thieves and provide ageis to you. Keep using phase retreat while the thief is stealthed so they cannot get behind you easily.

You need to keep clones up to keep up the pressure and mess with the theif. Also why are you using time warp? Unless your in a group, switch to mass invis. If the theif uses shadow refuge, use focus 4 to pull them out, then summon the phantasm immediately on them.

Yes, thieves are completely imbalanced in WVW, partially as a class, partially due to their mechanics, but mainly as their setup is based on their PVE balance, rather than their PVP setup which is a little fairer. I used to hate fighting thieves but the guys in GF on Ebay taught me, now most thieves I fight are predictable and use the same pointless rotations. The thieves with skill who don’t run 521 builds… they are actually fun to fight.

Good luck~

Jinks.2057:

GF 7 – Agg 0

GF swept Mag in GvG.

I was hoping Agg would beat GF

Was that the final score? Nice job GF!

I couldn’t find the fight on the GVG site earlier (site seems to be down atm). Was this not ranked?

- Richard

JonathanSharp.7094:

ensoriki.5789:

Hope there is something for Earth shield in there too.

There is a little bit on that actually!

Heading out for the night!

/waves to forums

It’s 12.40 PM in Aus! You get back to your desk Mr Sharp, you have balancing to do!

There was a discussion about this in the mesmer forums. It has been ongoing for some time now, I remember a friend summoning those things on his mes a while back. Somehow the clones are keeping the 6th armor bonus… in some situations mesmer clones were proccing fear from another rune set.

Josh… if Anet paid more attention to the class forums you guys would know this stuff already…

The mesmer trait Deceptive Evasion is supposed to create a clone at the end of your dodge roll. This functions, however the clone has the incorrect target – often targeting the closes enemy instead of your actual target.

This is extremely frustrating. For example in wvw, you may dodge an attack from another player and summon a clone, but that clone instead starts attacking a nearby mob. This means not only do you have a wasted clone up, that mob is now aggrod – due to a bug – and means you have more to deal with. Also it messes up shatters as you will be hitting the wrong target.

This is essential to resolve for mesmers in wvw/pve. Please ensure the clone summoned correctly targets your current target on dodge. Thank you.

The mesmer trait Illusionary Elasticity makes bounce attacks have an additional bounce. this affects all our skills/phantasms/clones apart from staff clones. Staff clones do not have the additional bounce and retain default behavior.

Please update this to affect staff clones or clarify exactly what is expected of this trait. Thank you.

The mesmer trait Phantasmal Haste is meant to reduce the attack period (not the skill cooldown) by 20% for phantasms, but this does not occur. Instead they are reduced by a lower amount, some like the swordsman are not affected at all. Taken from the wiki:

Phantasm Base attack period Traited attack period
Illusionary Mariner 8.03s 8.03s
Illusionary Whaler 7.1s 5.27s
Phantasmal Berserker 5.57s 5.17s
Phantasmal Defender kitten 3.6s
Phantasmal Disenchanter 3.3s 2.6s
Phantasmal Duelist 5.4s 4.4s
Phantasmal Mage 6.3s 5.27s
Phantasmal Swordsman 3.2s 3.2s
Phantasmal Warden 8.07s 6.77s
Phantasmal Warlock 5.57s 4.13s

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Phantasmal_Haste

Please fix this trait so it applies as intended. Thank you.

Mesmer phantasms are supposed to continually attack the target they are summoned on and not change target, however they constantly change target. This happens a lot against thieves in wvw – which is extremely frustrating when you are fighting a thief, they stealth then the phantasm starts attacking the nearby drake instead.

I do know what what triggers the change, some times they remain on target even after a long stealth, other times they change immediately. This makes managing phantasms difficult.

I have noticed this also occur when fighting mobs in pve/wvw.

Thank you.

I can confirm the game crash bug, had it occur twice when switching cat form a few times (not rapidly, atleast a few seconds between changes, just trying to get a specific form). I think I sent a crash log in. Pretty sure it was in Plains of Ashford.

Since we are providing such valuable testing and error reporting Josh, could you pass on the the design team how nice having a male lion would be? One with a mane and very majestic looking. <3

Other than AOE CC (Diversion, Chaos Storm, Focus 4, GS 5), its tedious to pull of interrupts due to the nature of some animations. Lag, pixel spam, petting zoo’s and fast paced combat don’t help.

I think there were some tests and threads in the mesmer forum with some interesting results but didn’t conclude an effective build could be designed around it. Though with so many people running perplexity runes in wvw it may give grounds for such a build to exist….

I think a lot of this balance concern for different game modes comes from WVW and how imbalanced things are there, due to higher stat gear, food and less controls.

Jonathan, can you name a single skill or ability which is balanced separately for WVW?

With that being said, are you aware of the sheer difference in damage a killshot/backstab/eviserate etc can do in wvw compared to pvp? Do you think 521 spam on thieves is balanced (black powder, spam HS, 8k backstab, run away, repeat every 3 seconds) or fair reward for the skill cap (minimal) required? Or using Cloak and Dagger of ambient mobs during a fight to escape or gain additional stealth that wouldn’t be possible in a pvp setting. Worse with a 3s revealed throws pvp balance out of the window (hence the daily thread in the wvw forums complaining about thief balance). With the additional healing runes added and sentinel gear, warrior regen is beyond what should be possible. Or how engineers die from retal when their usual weapon skills are not designed for a wvw environment? These situations, and many more, all exist in wvw.

Or simply said, how do you think the pvp community would react if perplexity runes were added to pvp in their current state (for those who don’t know, this is a pve runeset where the 6th rune inflicts 5 stacks of confusion for 10s on interrupt, no ICD. So any class which can spam interrupts can now spam confusion better than a mesmer ever could. Hello s/p thief, cc engine, cc warrior. I’ve even seen BM rangers run these…) There hasn’t been a balance update, or any note from any developer regarding this, yet they are completely out of balance in wvw? Why? Is this really not ‘worthy’ of your time? I’m pretty sure wvw is far more active than pvp will be any time soon….

To a lot of people, wvw is the only game mode which allows straight 1v1 fights, as you don’t have to worry about point control and can actually design your gear with a lot more variety allowing more builds and synergy with traits/utility skills. Yet the constant complaints stem from the fact the entire balance in wvw is based around a completely different game mode, with different stat combinations and limitations. This creates an unfair situation, especially when you balance around a build in pvp which may not be viable outside of pvp, and said balance ruins the build in other game modes.

tldr; WVW is a different game mode with different dynamics yet is balanced around small man point control situations. I do not comprehend how a developer can justify this. Please prove me wrong by addressing the above points if you choose to, though I fear this would be ignored as usual.

Also, thank you for the upcoming balance transparency, looking forward to it!

Occurring constantly, both when signed in and out. Refreshing page seems to resolve. Occurring for all parts of the forum. Using latest version of Firefox/Windows 7. First noticed this morning 12 or so hours ago.

I would just love to quickly be able to see ageis and stability. In a fast past combat, both are really important and you need to be able to tell what is and isn’t up quickly.

Pinko.2076:

Proud of mesmer hiding – is this 2012?

No, it’s 2013. If you right click in the lower right hand corner of your computer it should give you the year, depending on your OS.

And yes, I am very proud to be able to hide from Mag zergs. It takes a lot of skill, concentration and practice. How else could a mesmer go unnoticed by 20 people sweeping a tower?

Mag you missed a spot.

Zepher.7803:

Mag plays like everyone should play to develop their character by gaining WXP from flipping stuff. the more WXP rank/skills you have the better you can serve your Server. learning how to mash into another group behind the windmill is doing what?

it’s like training for the league, are you going to sit for and hour gaining little, or are you going to flip maps gaining a lot of different things that will help come tournament time.

PPT is over, it’s time to get ready to R UUUU MMM BBBBBLLLLE!

I miss you. ;_;

- Richard

KStudios.2850:

Asuka Shikinami.5462:

Guys, if you partake in fight clubs, GVG’s or just enjoy fair fights, please support this thread:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/An-option-to-disable-orb-buff-on-myself/first#post2793764

We have some great roaming and guild groups on Ebay, I am not sure about Mag and BP but this will help a lot of people out.

- Richard

Forgive my ignorance, but what is this “orb”? I haven’t been ingame since yesterday morning. Spouses day for using the TV today and all that jazz, lol. =)

Was it an update?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=8ciFk-dvUOI

Basically the lake is going, 5 new capture points are being added. Controlling 3 of them on a map gives you (wvw wide) a bonus to stats and each stomp = 1 point.

People want to disable the buff on themselves to prevent it messing with GVG’s, especially when trolls could use this to mess with matchups.

Guys, if you partake in fight clubs, GVG’s or just enjoy fair fights, please support this thread:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/An-option-to-disable-orb-buff-on-myself/first#post2793764

We have some great roaming and guild groups on Ebay, I am not sure about Mag and BP but this will help a lot of people out.

- Richard

+1

I can just imagine people deliberately taking the orb thing just to mess with GVG’s, especially when it’s covered on all 3 maps. Also for fightclubs, a sudden change in stats is tedious. Isn’t that sort of trolling something you wanted to avoid Hugh?

Right click, disable buff until logout. You will save yourself many angry customers with that simple fix Anet.

JonathanSharp.7094:

Agreed on the shaving + making sure we don’t overdo it with big hits to the classes.

Also good points about making sure that we don’t take away the things “holding down” some of the strong builds. I think Mes and Ele are probably ok for the most part, as long as we tone down the conditions output from some classes, and bring the S/D Thief in line.

Jonathan, you recently made a huge change to the way mesmers work in general (making IC grandmaster instead of minor) which messed up rotations/cooldowns/balance of the class since the begging of the game. No explanation was given, no room to discuss or just work with the community as to why this affected so much but didn’t tone down the elements of the class which are so strong.

Would you consider popping over to the mesmer forum one day to discuss this change or just explain why it was done and listen to peoples feedback. We want to help you guys, we know our classes inside out and when you tear things apart, don’t explain the change to make an effort to discuss/reason with players, it wears away at our patience and trust of your balancing team.

The same could be said of all classes and major changes… but in this case you changed an aspect of the class which was regarded as somewhat essential since release… without communication…

Oh and if you have contacts in WOTC, you have no excuse to use proxies. :P

Game starts around four hours and fifty five minutes

I have no clue why putting those numbers together is censored… :S

http://www.twitch.tv/guildwars2/b/454437568

From around 4.30 the commentary starts. Game starts around kitten , unsure if there is a single video – just watching atm.

The daily achievement for Magumma is misspelt as ‘Maguuman Veteran Killer’

Thanks for your response guys!

TyPin.9860:

Although I don’t like having yet another currency in the game, I like it somehow. Now ANet, make it so

I thought this at first… another currency would be messy. Then I realized Fractals has multiple and each dungeon has one… if they cannot prioritize WVW over fractals, then we have a problem.

Nilgoow.1037:

A local mom discovered this ONE WEIRD TRICK to countering stealth!

Thieves hate her!

Can you please bring up stealth. Why blocking attacks doesn’t proc any revealed? Why revealed is only 3s in wvw (not relevant to tPVP but devs never comment on balance outside of this forum)? Why it can be stacked for such long duration and not removed unless it runs out/revealed procced?

It’s not something which is discussed a lot, especially with the current meta, but the nature of the mechanic should be brought up at some point…

Revealed = 4s to bring this in line with PVP class balance, as WVW is supposed to be a PVP game mode…

If an attack is made in stealth and this is blocked, the attacker gets a 1s revealed. This adds more counter play with blocks and seems more appropriate.. seriously if someone is trying to stab you in the back, and you block it, how could you not notice they were behind you…

If a character exits stealth (normally, not revealed) they get an immediate 1s revealed, to prevent c/d spam (especially of NPC mobs and ambient creates) and force players to use stealth more resourcefully.

I think these three changes would bring about more counter-play and balance in the overall mechanic, not just thieves. It would also force many thieves to work towards a higher skill level rather than rely on an overpowered mechanic. At the same time thieves do need some buffs in their weaker areas. The amount of 521 thieves roaming is proof how much of an advantage the mechanic gives to the class – while other classes can stealth, no one can spam it at this level.

What if there was a new currency that was only obtained by getting a wvw rank. The currency is account bound so getting 1 rank on any character gives your account one of these points. This can then be spent on wvw supplies/wvw gear/ascended gear. For example

1 point = Champions chest (this is not imbalanced as these can be farmed so easily in pve)
1 point = materials bag (contains 2 T6 mats like the laurel bags)
3 points = special material bag (2 items, t6 mats/cores/lodestones)

20 points = ascended ring
20 points = ascended amulet
20 points = ascended accessory
50 points = unique wvw ascended backpiece (make multiple available, unique skins)
1 point = wvw infusion

10 points = unique tier 1 wvw weapon skin
20 points = unique tier 2 wvw weapon skin
50 points = unique tier 3 wvw weapon skin

5 points = tier 1 unique wvw armor skin
15 points = tier 2 unique wvw armor skin
30 points = tier 3 unique wvw armor skin

1 point = 2 ram/balli/ac
2 points = 1 treb/golem
3 points = superior ram/balli/ac
5 points = superior treb/golem

50 points = tier 1 WVW Title (such as Lord of the Battle)
100 points = tier 2 WVW Title (such as Master of war)
200 points = tier 3 WVW rank (such as Turner of tides)
300 points = tier 3 WVW title (such as Destroyer of Worlds)

This could create a situation where people could obtain gear through wvw without having PVE time gating. The current situation is not balanced compared to PVE – compare how quickly you can get ascended rings through fractals to wvw, the later relying on completing dailies instead of a wvw achievement system. This would be time based depending on the contribution to wvw. Obviously people who zerg are goiing to have higher rankings, but in reality this is no different to the current rank or if those people went to pve to zerg invasion events. At last this may give the rest of us a chance to get gear for wvw or mats/gold if required.

Also having additional skins available, such as tiered weapon skins/armor/backpieces will give players something to work towards rather than just a rank they can’t even see themselves or show their allies. Having titles purchasable by WVW ranks, that actually stand out, could be quite an incentive to some players. This is obviously time gated by and would require dedication to get (tier 3 title would require 600 rank points to get to after all… that’s a lot of time) but would be a far better reward than what is currently available.

DevonCarver.5370:

Herr der Friedhoefe.2490:

DevonCarver.5370:

The mats will absolutely drop in WvW. In addition, generally speaking, we are putting a heavier emphasis on finding long-term solutions to redressing the reward imbalance between PvE and WvW. I can’t claim they will ever be 100% equal all the time, but we would like it to never be the case that you are choosing between playing WvW and getting good rewards. The two should be one in the same.

Does this mean we can also look forward to Ascended items from WvW badge rewards? I’m talking about back pieces and accessories of course.

I’m not going hold my breath on this one.

Purely from badges, no. We will be getting Ascended back items into WvW and accessories are already there. We’ve been focused on the Ascended items more generally and not specifically in WvW right now. However, we will make sure WvW is at parity with the rest of the game in terms of Ascended gear.

Devon, is it really fair to say accessories are available in WvW? The cost is 40 laurels and 50 ectos, which is the same as in PvE for any player who doesn’t/cannot run guild missions.

It takes a month of doing your daily and monthly to get enough laurels for that. 40 ecto’s is around 55-60 rares, I am only on a mid tier server so don’t know about higher tiers, but I certainly do not get 55 rares drop quickly. There isn’t a WVW way to get accessories, there isn’t a way to purchase these based on achievements or skill in wvw, it’s just a PVE solution tacked on. Why does it need 40 laurels anyway? That’s an entire months laurels for a single accessory… for a single character… for a single stat combination. Obsessive gating much?

On that note, can we also point out the imbalance in getting rings from wvw? They cost 25 laurels and 250 badges – meaning you can only get 2 per month or so. Doing fractals, pve content, you can get one every 10 days from a single fractal run (even quicker if you do more dailies) without having to spend laurels – how is this balanced compared to wvw?

As a WVW player, it feels like the development team really do not care about making a fair situation for WVW players, especially with new gear tiers. It took so long to even get ascended gear in wvw, and that was even more time gated than pve! You may believe differently as a developer – I am merely echoing my own thoughts and what I hear repeated time and time again in game.

Why not add another currency for wvw (yes, yet another….) in which it is only awarded 1 per wvw rank (currency is account bound). This replaces laurels for the cost, so you could get an ascended ring every 20 ranks or something. Wouldn’t that be much more fair and exclusive for WvW players? That way you could specifically balence rewards on WVW activity/contribution without having to worry about daily/pve gating…

Edit: Made a new thread to discuss: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Add-a-new-currency-obtained-by-WVW-rank/first#post2723866

Same thing is happening with The Legend?

http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/29180

Just saw this on reddit, the Legend is now sitting on 1333 gold. Double what it was yesterday.

http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/29180

Someone is feeling ambitious. Though I feel sorry for the people trying to make Bifrost…

We tested these in WVW with a friend who was visiting an enemy server. Even with Melandru Runes and -40% cond duration food, it was near impossible to keep the confusion stacks down against an interrupt mesmer build. Being able to apply 20s confusion (due to +cond duration) on each interrupt, with no ICD, and constantly interrupt your opponents heals/some cleanses is so wrong. Let’s not even bring up what thieves can do with these. You don’t want them in PVP.

Strangely enough multiple patches have passed and they haven’t altered the runes for wvw yet… the torment ones were nerfed quickly…

Ironically now there is 4 on there at 3 gold each (3 sellers)…

tolunart.2095:

Asuka Shikinami.5462:

Zumy.6318:

Believe me, they sell.

Is there a reason for that? People accidentally buying?

Well, at the moment every dagger listed for sell orders less than 15 gold have sold. Which means at least a few probably sold for 10g to 14.99g.

Someone wants to throw a bunch of greens into the MF, and buys 250 daggers without checking the total price. There are, say, 120 low priced daggers and the rest are various prices from 5s – 15g. Suddenly his wallet is 200 gold lighter, and a lot of people who listed items for sale six months ago and forgot about them get a surprise.

Wow, that’s interesting. Thank you very much for the explanation.

Though in this case it’s a level 50 dagger, so odd to throw into the forge!

Zumy.6318:

Believe me, they sell.

Is there a reason for that? People accidentally buying?

Noticed this when selling some green items:

http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/15028

Buy Price: 95 Copper
Sell Price: 15 Gold

Interesting gamble… or expensive mistake…

There was a dev post ages ago saying this is a technical limitation/fault with the system and could/would not be fixed. That was atleast 3 months ago and I don’t have the source, so may be incorrect… but yeah…

DaShi.1368:

Asuka Shikinami.5462:

The problem is mesmers have easy access to two traits that increase the damage of phantasms by 15%, and they are both easily accessible.

You mean a trait 25 points into a line that doesn’t sync well with any of the other trait lines?

Please describe some traits you don’t find easily accessible.

Yeah that’s a good point. I used to think inspiration was good for phantasm builds, but 15% boost isn’t much compared to putting the rest of the points into dueling. the 15 point minor trait is good… sort of, but is restricted. The rest provide nice utility but yeah…. Apologies if I was unclear, more referring to IC moving from 5 point to 25 point and how many builds were hit by that in terms of general utility.

Iirc, there are no grandmaster major traits to do with phantasms at all (ignoring obvious illusion lines) and a minimum of other traits. This should be improved upon.

Sadly, even if this thread is just a rumor, I wouldn’t be surprised if it actually happened. Think of how the class has ‘balanced’ already….

Mesmers are very hard to kill, near perma invul + stealth + teleport + cc + moa + etc… Like a God :/

Ilusionist duelist hits harder than thief unload. Swordman and berserker do not stay far. Spatial surge taking same damage as evicerate, and without cooldown.

Actually a mesmer can easily change the tide of battle :/

May be i am the supreme noob here because i never win an mesme.
NEVER!

I put the text in bold in that quote that I thought everyone should see. Duelist hits harder than thief unload and Spatial surge (The mesmer greatsword auto-attack) is on par with the warrior’s axe kill-shot move known to hit 10k plus.

I feel just pointing that out is enough. I can’t even address the OP because of this post.

Spacial surge hits as much as eviscerate? Are you people high. At max range spatial surge may hit for 2k at most which compared to other classes AA is a joke. iDuelest can be dodged and all damage is negated thief unload is spammable iDuelist has a CD after its cast as well.

Mesmer damage especially their phantasms does not need a direct nerf. If anet wants to screw over phantasm builds then just remove empowered illusions.

With only 20 pt in dueling, the mesmer get a perfect sinergi between sword, pistol, crit rate, crit dmg, bleed spamm and perma vigor. Not talking about boon riper, near-perma invul, swith position, and 1 phantasm duelist every 16s.

Don’t need to coment about spatial surge, the hit are very very hard (3x 1000 – 1500 without cd surpass far evicerate and killshot)

Sugestion:
- Send Empowered Ilusion to Grandmasters trait.
- Send Blade Training to Master trait.

(while warrior no have trait for sword, mesmer have one in adept trait no coments more)

In the last ‘balance’ patch, every mesmer skill on sword (mainhand/offhand) was increased by 20% CD, unless you have 25 points in a trait points in a line that has nothing to do with phantasm builds (and then blurred was still increased by 20% and changed in behavior, though this affects wvw more than pvp, the effect is still noticeable)

dot dot dot

JETWING.2759:

I hope this is true.
Mesmers are very hard to kill, near perma invul + stealth + teleport + cc + moa + etc… Like a God :/

Ilusionist duelist hits harder than thief unload. Swordman and berserker do not stay far. Spatial surge taking same damage as evicerate, and without cooldown.

Actually a mesmer can easily change the tide of battle :/

May be i am the supreme noob here because i never win an mesme.
NEVER!

lol

really nothing else to say here

The problem is mesmers have easy access to two traits that increase the damage of phantasms by 15%, and they are both easily accessible. Also previously iZerker was bugged and not doing the correct amount of damage, which has been fixed so this is doing more.

Blanket nerfs are not a simple solution though. They tried to ‘weaken’ phantasm specs by moving traits so they would have a 20% increase in phantasm cooldown, and as a result nerfed all non-shatter builds quite a lot. Worse, tanky or sustain based phantasm specs, that could have done ok in the current condi spam meta, are horrible to play now. Ammusingly enough, the old burst specs this thread is based on are still viable and far too strong 1v1, as people just altered traits a little to adjust and no damage was done… to this build… but so many other ones suffered…

Just note a couple of things. Mesmer base damage is a lot lower than other classes due to phantasms and shatters, though both have been reduced a bit with the last ‘attempt at balance’ patch by reducing the HP of clones/phantasms. Mesmers strength comes from the combination of some traits, which is why so many higher level pvp mesmer builds are always the same. They really need to adjust some of the combinations to tone them down a but like both the phantasm damage traits, but add more interest elements to play around. At the same time, the IC change should be undone as this hurts a lot of builds, especially in pve/wvw (not that the balence teams care about things outside of esports, so this won’t happen…). Phantams are supposed to be a core class mechanic, but we have little to build around other than spike damage (or bleed stacking with iDuelist, not sure how much this is used in high level pvp though), so until that changes people are going to run such builds and take advantage of the spike potential.

As for killing phantasm builds, block/dodge the initial attack then kill the phantasm, a couple of hits will do it. Even though they may summon the phtantasm in stealth, if they do they likely don’t have any other stealths available for a while so apply pressure once the phantasm/phantasms are down. It’s unlikely a mesmer will have both the weapon trait and IC (unless running sword/sword) so they likely won’t be able to resummon a phantasm for 16 seconds once its down. The base HP of phantasms is around 2k iirc, they do not gain more HP from the mesmers vitality (toughness helps though, but glassy mesmers have none). The largest increase in phantasm HP is 70% (signet + inspiration trait, not sure which order they are applied) so the max HP they would have is 3k or so. A phantasm mesmer will likely not shatter, so their base damage will be a lot lower once the phantasms are dead.

John Smith.4610:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

But make no mistake. If you didn’t make your Gold from the Queen’s Gauntlet, or Champion farming, you’ll be left behind in terms of wealth. That’s why it’ll be interesting to see how Anet responds to this.

This is incredibly hyperbolous. In the last week, the median player earned less than 3 gold in the new content (that’s discounting all players who earned less than 1 gold).

Is this very different from the results pre-patch, where COF farming was the substitute?

Yes.

And we need to keep bumping this until Anet takes the time to comment. It feels like this was half done, the system was a good idea but locking another function to characters instead of accounts, in a game mode in which having alts can really contribute to team play, simply isn’t cool.

Devon, if you are reading this, please let us know whats going on.