Guild Wars 2

Ross Biddle.2367:

nearlight.3064:

This is very very nitpicky, but why do so many people, especially on the mesmer forums spell “condi” as “condie”? Its just jarring to read and makes me think it sounds like con-die, or con-di-eh. Like what law of the english language what let you take on an e to the end of an abbreviated game mechanic term? Whats its purpose, is it supposed to be a bizarrely cuter looking spelling for the abbreviation?

Yeah, and while we’re at it, why don’t the United States, Liberia, and Burma use the metric system?

Because hell, I can’t think of any better way of measuring temperature than to base it on the temperature of the human body and really really cold salt water. Can you?

Curunen.8729:

Cygnus.6903:

The problem with PU condi is not that it isn’t supposed to be a thing, it’s that it’s the easiest spec to play in the game, yet quite possibly the hardest spec to fight against.

I really can’t believe people that are coming here trying to make a case about PU condi requiring ‘effort, timing and constant work to get the condis up and keep them up’. I mean, how deep can you fall into your own dreamworld? You can literally keep up high stacks of torment by auto attacking…

As a person who generally can’t play PvE longer then an hour because it’s so dull, I found playing this build to be worse (and easier).

Where does it say PU in the title of the thread?

Condi builds have many variations. PU is a single trait, I know it’s a shocking revelation but it is possible to play Condi Mesmer without PU.

Have you tried playing without PU? How about without Scepter? Or without Blinding Dissipation?

I play with none of those things (sword/torch, staff) and can assure you it requires effort, skill and guile. I cannot simply “auto attack” someone to death…

To be fair, even the bog-standard Sc+T/Staff PU Condi Mes can’t “auto attack” anyone to death. Not unless they’re literally Akitten

IT: “high stacks of torment by auto attacking…” lawl

Mogar.9216:

2 sec per clone would be insanely op , lol 8 secoonds on full shatter !!! one can only dream…. edit: imagine that shared to the whole team!!

Oh, I’m imagining it. I can hear my whole team cursing my name and lineage, for causing us to lose a point during a teamfight.

AlphatheWhite.9351:

Yeah, the tooltips have a tendency to cut off the whole thing.
The real key is that they designed it based not around the number in the tooltip, but around the concept that 3 seconds of alacrity will get you 2 seconds of recharge. The same thing happens with chill.
And in testing, that appears to be the case (there’s certainly some room for some more precision testing to verify, if you can design a better test).

Fair enough, I’m more than happy to take your word on it. That makes sense, I was just adhering a bit too closely to the tooltips.

And in-game testing isn’t usually my wheelhouse, but if I come up with something, I’ll be sure to let you know.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

So.. If I’m understanding this properly:

If I drop 2 wells on a Warrior who just spammed Hundred blades…

…His hundred blades (normally 8s CD) will recharge in… essentially 5 seconds?

Stupid stereotypical writer-brain. This is really not processing in my head for some reason. >_<

In about ~5.3 seconds, yeah. Assuming he’s on CD the whole time he has the alacrity.

Basically, for any skill, you can take what I wrote as the “Gained” Cooldown. Subtract that from the normal skill cooldown, and there’s your answer.

• (Normal CD) – (“Gained” CD) = New CD

Assuming that they’re in CD the whole time they have alacrity, and that the Normal CD is longer than the time they’re in alacrity.

Xstein.2187:

Gained cool downs below all rounded to the hundredths place.
1. Gained Cooldown = 1.33
2. Gained Cooldown = 2.67
…
…
…
7. Gained Cool down = 7.33 to 8.67 seconds
instead of 7.26 to 8.58
AtomsOrSystems has a rounding error.
You have to use 1 and two thirds (5/3) (or 1.6666666….) instead of 1.66 because they actually use a fraction instead of just the number 1.66
AlphaTheWhite taught me this in another thread.
The results are similar. However, when dealing with large numbers of alacrity, it may drive the results off a bit. The equations used by AtomsOrSystems are the same.

Gained Cooldown = ((5/3) X (Seconds of Alacrity you are under)) – (Seconds of Alacrity you are under)

I made this mistake before. When calculating cool down reduction, if you use 1.66 instead of (5/3), you will calculate a cool down reduction of 39.759% instead of the actual value of 40%

I’ll stand corrected, if this is the case.

I was following the tooltip, which says 66%. That comes to 0.66, not 0.66 repeating. However, if some dev clarification or in-game testing shows that it’s actually 0.66 repeating, well… there you go.

Alacrity increases your CD recharge by 66%; so, for every second of alacrity, you actually recharge 1.66 seconds worth of cooldown. (I’m going to let you do the rounding yourself, a science background means I get twitchy if I eliminate significant figures.)

1 Well / iAvenger (2s Alacrity)

With 2 seconds of alacrity, you will recharge 3.32 seconds of cooldown, instead of 2.
1.66 * 2 = 3.33
3.32 – 2 = 1.33
“Gained” Cooldown = 1.33 seconds
New Cooldown Time = 20 – 1.33 = 18.67 seconds

2 Wells (4s Alacrity)

0.66 * 4 = 2.67
“Gained” Cooldown = 2.67 seconds
New Cooldown Time = 20 – 2.67 = 17.33 seconds

3 Wells (6s Alacrity)

0.66 * 6 = ~4
“Gained” Cooldown = ~4 seconds
New Cooldown Time = 20 – 3.96 = ~16 seconds

Well of Recall (5s Alacrity)

0.66 * 5 = 3.33
“Gained” Cooldown = 3.33 seconds
New Cooldown Time = 20 – 3.3 = 16.67 seconds

Well of Recall traited (7s Alacrity)

0.66 * 7 = 4.67
“Gained” Cooldown = 4.67 seconds
New Cooldown Time = 20 – 4.62 = 15.33 seconds

4 Wells Without Recall (8s Alacrity)

0.66 * 8 = 5.33
“Gained” Cooldown = 5.33 seconds
New Cooldown Time = 20 – 5.28 = 14.67 seconds

4 Wells With Recall (11-13s Alacrity)

Untraited: 0.66 * 11 = 7.333
Traited: 0.66 * 13 = 8.667
Untraited “Gained” Cooldown = 7.33 seconds
Traited “Gained” Cooldown = 8.67 seconds
New Untraited Cooldown Time = 20 – 7.33 = 12.67 seconds
New Traited Cooldown Time = 20 – 8.67 = 11.33 seconds = 12 seconds, due to Alacrity’s built-in limits

EDIT: Edited for my stupid formatting errors.
EDIT 2: Adjusted my numbers to more closely match in-game testing, rather than the tooltip.
EDIT 3: Changed my final example, to account for Alacrity’s 60% limit.

I love this entire conversation, in a very cringe-inducing way. “Some people are getting rewards, slowly, in private arenas. This has no bearing on me or my enjoyment of the game whatsoever, and it must be stopped.”

Also, ranked is ranked. As in leaderboards (or leagues). Unranked is… not ranked. That you think there should be some additional reward divide there is the oddest form of elitism I’ve seen on this PvP forum, which is prone to odd forms of elitism.

For Lyssa’s sake, OP, get over yourself. If someone wants to slowly farm through a dungeon reward track in a week or two of doing custom arena dailies, how… why would you possibly care?

JoshuaRAWR.4653:

I really don’t understand how you people can think that Condi Mesmer is justified in it’s current iteration.. Is it because you all main Mesmers or something?

It’s nothing to do with the opponent not having enough Condi cleanse either, a Mesmer can destroy a Signet necro running as much condition transfer as possible due to a combination of misdirection, blocks, blinds, stealths, distortions and the evades, all while keeping up the pressure.

I have yet to see a good condi mesmer because it’s honestly hard to tell if the person playing it is indeed good, because (and i’ve done this myself) you can literally just spawn 3 clones, and go f2f1f3f4 and It’ll kill most players..

Seriously, what?

First of all, spamming f2f1f3f4 won’t kill a kitten with only 3 clones and IP, unless the person the mesmer is fighting is doing their best to press all of the buttons and dies to confusion. (It will also put most of the mesmers burst, and a lot of its survivability, on simultaneous cooldown. So… there’s that.)

Second of all, as much as people like to deny it, condi mesmers have few or no cover conditions. So if you have any kind of condi clear ability, they’re neutered. A signet necro should wreck a condi mesmer, unless the necro is significantly outplayed.

I… I sincerely don’t understand people making arguments like this. “A mesmer running condis killed me, so it must be OP. Let’s ignore the fact that condi mesmers aren’t meta in anything except WvW Roaming (lawl), and see effectively no high-level play in any game mode anywhere.”

Lyssa forbid there should be a build capable of killing you, right?

supcutie is overpowered, needs a nerf before he becomes the meta for 6 months.

Let me start by saying that I (still) love the Chronomancer, and I think almost all of the changes to the Shield (and the iAvenger) were great.

Except

The phantasm, currently, just runs up to an enemy and stands there, doing its attack cycle. Except, of course, for anything except an AFK or glitched enemy, they die to the very first AoE or cleave.

Basically, the iAvenger is back to being useless in PvE (and a lot of PvP). It doesn’t even maintain the small amount of distance that iSwordman keeps. More than once, just in the open world (much less instanced content), I saw the phantasm spawn, run to its target, and die immediately to cleave/AoE.

To be fair, sometimes clouds can be real kittens.

apharma.3741:

I think for most people fighting a condi PU mesmer it’s the confusion that really gets them. They feel they can’t cleanse or else they get hit with even more damage and so it feels very oppressive.

What? A Mesmer is confusing to play against, sometime? O.O

Stop the presses, someone get the president on the phone, because this will not stand.

In all seriousness, though, I think you’re right. I just… I don’t really accept it as a valid reason for the repeated gutting that condi Mes seems to get as a matter of course.

I was going to make a really sarcastic post about Condi Mesmers being super powerful, because reasons, or something. But honestly, I just can’t.

I think you get to the heart of the problem here, though, at least in part. A lot of people don’t bring (enough) cleanses, they see themselves dying “without the Condi Mes/character doing anything,” and then they go and spew rage all over the forums.

In a larger sense, I guess it’s just the wages of playing a class that’s inherently good at dueling. People die in a 1v1, and then assume what they were playing against needs nerfing.

If anything, I’m happy about it. More stealth counterplay might mean fewer people all-capsing about "PU Mesmer Cheese Builds) whenever they die to a Mesmer.

I mean, it probably won’t. But I can dream.

AlphatheWhite.9351:

Sirbeaumerdier.3740:

So I’m supposed to leave the mesmer alone inside smc or a keep?

No, I can’t. It mean I have to bring lots of ppl to flush him out and take quite some time to do it if the mesmer is even not half bad.

You completely ignored where I said that staying in keeps is gonna mark you on the minimap. That’s going to make it extremely difficult, if not outright impossible, for mesmers to stay in a keep long enough to retake it.
So this is going to be a non-issue, which means nerfing mesmer stealth for this reason is meaningless.

Sirbeaumerdier.3740:

Lastly, I agree that not every build should be able to take on every other build…but that is pretty much what the problem of the mesmer in wvw is right now… they can do exactly what you say none should.

He wasn’t saying a “should”, you were. He was suggesting that it’s not important that any particular build be beatable in 1v1 WvW roaming.

For example, every MOBA has a few characters who are supreme duelists. Trying to fight a duelist alone in League of Legends is probably going to get you killed. This isn’t considered a bad thing, it’s considered a feature of that class over others. The principle that a dire or rabid condi mesmer can beat any other class 1v1 isn’t inherently bad, only if its effects are. But the effect of condi mes being unbeatable (if this were even actually true) is that you need to bring a friend when roaming WvW (which seems to have been Anet’s intention in the first place), and that your camps aren’t always safe when the zerg is far away. Since that’s extremely low-impact in terms of WvW objectives, it’s not important that Anet deal with it anytime soon.

Had I responded first, I would have written this, but not nearly so eloquently. Cheers, Alpha.

IchigoHatake.5098:

IKR………. I fought this ranger that took every possible condi removing trait and utility and sigils and rune etc. He said he will beat me easy, but he lost every time :P. Fighting that ranger took a long time due to condi removal, but his skills has cooldown but my condition applying skills has such low cool down that soon enough I apply too much condition for him to remove.

These examples all assume that your opponent will be foolish enough to stand and fight in a prolonged, losing battle. As people have said over and over again, walk away. It’s WvW, you don’t need to worry about holding a point, just leave. Outrunning a Condi mesmer is just not that hard.

Every build shouldn’t be capable of stomping every other build, I don’t know why people think that they should. So you can’t win a 1v1 with a Condi mesmer; walk away, do something else, or come back with friends. Job done.

Hero.3527:

Well actually yes thiefs do have a lot of stealth, but they have to set it up such as leaping thorugh a blind field, shadow refuge

They have access to utility skills and weapon skills for stealth, just like Mesmer, but more of them. They also have smoke fields and leap finishers on top of that. In short, they have to deal with some fields because they have more stealth in general than anyone. And frankly, pressing two buttons isn’t all that onerous of a “combo.”

Hero.3527:

gotta get close and CnD etc, and their spike is not from lets say 900 and then whatever staff is im not sure. (like a mesmer)

If only thieves had access to a multitude of buttons that were instant gap closers. Maybe those buttons could also apply benefits to the thief in some cases, and significantly harm the enemy… Ah well, pipe dreams.

And… Mesmer spikes at 900?

Hero.3527:

Also i did not say that mesmers have perma stealth, as i stated i play mesmer and ive played a lot of (shatter) mesmer and i know how much stealth they have. And as for the guy who mentioned using conditions, no just no. Having a dire or even a rabids set i dont find fun, i like builds that do dmg (such as beserker etc) Idk how people find it fun to be a tanky lil guy and being able to make 100 mistakes and still win just because their dire condi or whatever, its not enjoyable.

Aren’t we talking about condi mesmers? I can’t claim to be an expert of Thief WvW (I probably shouldn’t make a claim to expert of anything in this game), but tanky survival and attrition kind of seems like the name of the game. Hence why only a few builds are able to actually do it successfully. Sure, you can glass cannon from stealth, but then you need to suck it up when a burst fails or you get caught, and you die.

Unless this is just another “My zerker build should be able to solo roam without dying when I’m surprised, ambushed or outnumbered” post.

Hero.3527:

Whenever i see a mesmer i think kittens more dire trash, and when i see a shatter mesmer i am legitimately surprised because non condi mesmers are so rare.

Non-Condi Mesmers aren’t rare. They comprise basically the entirety of high-level (even mid-level) builds in sPvP and PvE.

And shatter vs. condi Mesmers? You must not play as much Mesmer as you think, because since the trait update, there are few viable (and no high-level) non-shatter WvW or PvP builds. In WvW roaming, if you encounter a Mesmer, it is almost certainly a shatter condi mesmer.

I understand your frustration. But it’s been said before, and it will be said again: The game isn’t (can’t be) balanced around WvW roaming. It just won’t work.

Also, (as has been said before), roaming is a weird kind of beast. It basically requires a class that can 1vX multiple enemies, and can avoid/escape groups or enemies that you can’t face down. There are probably 3 or 4 builds right now that can handle that effectively. Is PU Condi the near the top? Yeah, probably.

But the biggest point is this: Roaming just doesn’t matter that much. I enjoy it, it sounds like you enjoy it, but we make pretty minimal impact to the overall WvW “score.” I can circle a borderland capping camps, even solo a tower here or there if I’m on a low tier and it’s an off-time. I can do something similar in EB. But at the end of the day, anything I do can be near-immediately undone by one or two enemies doing the exact same thing, likely in half the time.

Basically, I think it’s just not a high-priority problem for ANet. And it shouldn’t be.

EDIT: Sniped by Fay, with 1/10th of the words. And I’m ok with that.

AlphatheWhite.9351:

If alacrity happens to be too powerful specifically because icebow is powerful, doesn’t that say more about icebow than alacrity?
Also, having a mesmer means having 1 less icebow.

I agree with Alpha: icebow is OP, Mesmer needs a nerf.

(Sorry, couldn’t help myself.)

I’m incredibly happy with these adjustments, particularly where the shield is concerned. It’s great to feel like our feedback is taken into account.

I share the worry stated by some others here, that the new melee iAvenger will die far too quickly in a lot of circumstances. But I recognize that that’s largely an overall-phantasm problem, and not really specific to the iAvenger.

I’ve actually tried something similar to this a few times, and it’s worked every time (except for once). That being said, you’ve put much more thought on how to get 100% “uptime,” and it looks awesome!

The one time it didn’t work, a particularly persistent sweeper found the portal, called a few friend over, and they just spammed attacks on it until it dissipated (or until I stealthed, tried to bluff through, and got downed.)

There are a few good guides stickied at the top of the page including Chaos Archangel’s overall guide on how to Mesmer and Maxinion’s guide on how to Mesmer in dungeons.

Another guide that people have told me they found helpful, that doesn’t seem to be stickied, is Kaiyanwan’s more casual guide to leveling and open world play as a Mesmer.

Hopefully, some of those help! If you have any specific questions, feel free to shout them out. I (or someone smarter/better at Mesmer than me) will be happy to help out.

Just over 3 hours from now, at 9AM Pacific.

Daniel Handler.4816:

AtomsOrSystems.9420:

Daniel Handler.4816:

Except Robert specifcally said the damage was incidental not the focus of the weapon. So shield is not a power weapon. You could easily replace the confusion with weakness or some other defensive condition that goes through breakbars.

Design a shield phantasm for us.

Adding Confusion is entirely toothless, for all the reasons everyone was telling you above. Also, it goes against the “focus” that you keep referring back to, that it’s not supposed to be a damage weapon.

As for designing a shield phantasm, stop. Please. There are four pages here with suggestions on how to improve the shield phantasm. Don’t make someone restate them, again, because you don’t like them.

I agree with confusion being misplaced, so as you can see I switched the suggestion to weakness.

Your second comment makes no sense. I actually did read Zeniths comments on the shield. And the only one that redesigns shield is the initial post, which only adjusts the spawn duration by a second. I personally thought he might want to elaborate. You seem to think he is restating a point, I think he is sharing a new opinion, especially since the information contained within his reply is not found in any of his other posts in this thread.

Zenith (and anyone else) should of course feel free to add any new ideas they might have. But they didn’t volunteer them in a vacuum; they restated some original points, with some changes, after you did what you’ve done several times in this thread: trying to shut other people’s ideas down, then challenging them in an oddly combative manner.

Frankly, that kind of behavior is disingenuous at best. You’ve presumably seen the initial suggestions, and I know you’ve seen an overview of them all, because I posted it for you. Yet you continue to act as though you’re talking in a vacuum, instead of a multi-page thread, and there have been no ideas put forth. There have. Many of them. And you know it. If I didn’t know better, I could think you were trying to put some kind of “burden of proof” on the other person, in an effort to shut them up.

I assume that you, like everyone, just wants the best for the game and for the Mesmer profession. So, as I asked before, please stop. Stop asking questions you know have already been answered. Stop speculating on new content we know little or nothing about, and then speculating that shield must be fine because it will fill some role there. Stop bringing up other posters’ forum history. Stop with random digressions into theorycrafting for… warhorn? Mostly, stop acting like the concerns of everyone in this thread are meaningless because they don’t match up with your concerns, either because you’re focused on PvP, and this is a PvE thread, or whatever else. I assume it’s unintentional, but it comes across as very combative, and can (has) served to derail the conversation more than once.

Daniel Handler.4816:

Except Robert specifcally said the damage was incidental not the focus of the weapon. So shield is not a power weapon. You could easily replace the confusion with weakness or some other defensive condition that goes through breakbars.

Design a shield phantasm for us.

Adding Confusion is entirely toothless, for all the reasons everyone was telling you above. Also, it goes against the “focus” that you keep referring back to, that it’s not supposed to be a damage weapon.

As for designing a shield phantasm, stop. Please. There are four pages here with suggestions on how to improve the shield phantasm. Don’t make someone restate them, again, because you don’t like them.

Daniel Handler.4816:

AtomsOrSystems.9420:

I can’t speak for anyone else, but I would wonder where you were getting this “info,” considering all of our raid information has been vague in the extreme.

I would wonder if you’re listening to what people are saying, about Mesmer condi in PvE. I would wonder if you’ve ever tried it, to realize that we simply don’t have access to the useful condis in a useful way.

Mostly, I would wonder what any of this has to do with the problems faced by Shields in PvE.

And not all mobs have breakbars? Come one. Many if not most mobs that require a sustained amount of damage in a party setting (aka, any that it’s actually useful to summon phantasms on) had a breakbar in the beta weekends. Just like similar mobs have Defiance in the game as it is now. Even random vets have breakbars in Verdant Brink.

Unless you think we should be summoning iAvenger on the trash mobs, for the 3 seconds before they get burned down?

dulfy http://dulfy.net/2015/09/02/gw2-designing-challenging-content/

Build roles are what you do at a character level. Things like what weapons, utility skills, traits, and even armor you choose to bring to a fight. Some encounters are going to push you to try different weapons you rarely use, some are going to challenge you to select traits you haven’t considered equipping before, and some encounters may even require a member of your group to dust off that toughness gear to bulk up and tank some heavy hits to protect the condition-build players in the back. This is just a tiny sample of the types of build roles we want to push as a core part of Guild Wars 2 dynamic combat.

The entirely of my comments on shield was under the assumption that this was common knowledge.

Other people have responded to your apparent belief that we could cover a need for condis in PvE. They did it better than I could have.

As for tanky builds, if you really think the two single-blocks on Mesmer shield will somehow make us a “tanky” class, I don’t really have a ton of ways to respond to that. They won’t.

Daniel Handler.4816:

Now what if I told you raids require condi specced characters. What if I told you condi dps is not reliant on the offhand for sustain. What if I told you that not all mobs have break bars.

I can’t speak for anyone else, but I would wonder where you were getting this “info,” considering all of our raid information has been vague in the extreme.

I would wonder if you’re listening to what people are saying, about Mesmer condi in PvE. I would wonder if you’ve ever tried it, to realize that we simply don’t have access to the useful condis in a useful way.

Mostly, I would wonder what any of this has to do with the problems faced by Shields in PvE.

And not all mobs have breakbars? Come one. Many if not most mobs that require a sustained amount of damage in a party setting (aka, any that it’s actually useful to summon phantasms on) had a breakbar in the beta weekends. Just like similar mobs have Defiance in the game as it is now. Even random vets have breakbars in Verdant Brink.

Unless you think we should be summoning iAvenger on the trash mobs, for the 3 seconds before they get burned down?

Daniel Handler.4816:

Sorry you responded to a post that was not quoting you. I assumed the person I responded to was responding.

Fair enough. Although I would note that the majority of the post was preceded by “Questions for others.”

Daniel Handler.4816:

I think you are reading too much into the phrase he used. He said if the “utility of the weapon.” He did not say it was a utility weapon.

Whereas he didn’t mention it being a defensive weapon at all; how am I the one reading too far into what the weapon is “supposed” to be, especially since it was introduced to us with the idea that Mesmers take weapons (like shield, GS) and turn them to unusual ends?

Clearly, it’s supposed to be a weapon with access to some Utility, and some Defense. Which is fine, if more than a third (at best) of that utility actually works in PvE. And if the defense aspect is helpful, rather than either buggy or useless, in PvE.

Daniel Handler.4816:

I am confused about your comment about the mesmer shield being lackluster when in that other post Pyro’s alacrity sharing thing used the shield. It was heavily implied that mesmer would be the new meta.

Not unlike your “quote” below, I have no idea what you’re referring to here. If it was something I said, you’ll have to be a bit more specific.

Daniel Handler.4816:

It was also implied in the things they posted on raids that builds not entirely devoted to dps would be necessary.

Edit: I defer to Alpha’s response.

Daniel Handler.4816:

Do you have any ideas on how to fix Mesmer dps?

People more knowledgable than me have spent lots of time discussing how Mesmer dps could be fixed; I’ll let you find those (rather recent) threads and comments in this thread, instead of doing a poor job of trying to restate them for you.

Daniel Handler.4816:

EDIT:

PS. I don’t like that you make comments that from what you’ve seen in beta shield is borderline unusuable when you make comments in other threads like

You should try fractal 50 or the Verdant Brink beta mordrem. Casual AoE spam from mobs splashing everywhere for 6k+ hits a piece and unlike pvp these mobs don’t fold over/run away at the 15-20k hp damage line.
The Mordem snipers at Verdant Brink on a full reaper shroud necromancer take off the entire shroud and then some more HP in one charged shot.

Things that are perfect for blocking with either 4 or 5 on shield.

I don’t know where you’re pulling that from, but I’ve literally never said that. I even went and checked my own comments, to make sure I wasn’t having some kind of stroke. That’s definitely not my quote.

Also, yes, blocks could be helpful there. So are evades, and Aegis, and other mechanics that don’t entail the major DPS and utility loss that Mesmer shield currently does.

Daniel Handler.4816:

Or you could have politely said you disagree with my opinions on the devs priorities during balance of a defensive weapon. And then responded to the later half of the post which is without HoT out the true value of shield in PvE cannot be fully determined.

Intentional or not, you’ve been falling into a common mode with your posts, taking a PvE focused thread about what Mesmer’s need in PvE, and arguing that “no they don’t, because PvP.”

And while you may be right that there’s some HOT content that will magically change how the game works (I kind of doubt it), the fact remains that from everything we’ve seen of HOT, and everything in the base game over the past three years, the Mesmer Shield will be lackluster in PvE at best, and basically unusable at worst.

Daniel Handler.4816:

Question for others. Because shield has no aftercast before deja vu it seemed like you could chain the blocks, am I correct in assuming that this is not sufficient because people want a block that scales better with attackers?

Either way with mental defense, chronophantasma, and phantasmal persistence one can block two times every fifteen seconds and maintain 50% damage reduction. Plus you are performing two 4 person shatters every 15 as a result. You can toss in scepter and make it 4 blocks every 15. The issue with this is with the damage tied so heavily to phantasm, your shatters are not doing damage that great for meta PvE.

The fact remains that blocks are often-useless in PvE, and single blocks even moreso. The fact that we can have two single blocks in a row is barely better, especially since it’s predicated on the idea of being a Mesmer intentionally standing in front of an enemy’s attack. That’s just not how our class should work; I know that, because they took away most of our Retal traits for that exact reason. 4 blocks, still not that useful. And even if the blocks were at all useful in PvE, we’re accomplishing little or no DPS while they’re happening. A couple phantasm shatters… Well, it circles right back to the DPS issues for Mesmer as a whole, and with this weapon in particular.

Daniel Handler.4816:

Second question. How would you create a balanced defensive weapon for all three game modes given that the devs want to not drastically increase mesmer active defenses? (unlikely to make a block comparable to distortion in length)

Easy: like Robert Gee indicated, it’s not just a defensive weapon. It’s a utility weapon. So make its utility useful in PvE, instead of a hindrance.

Change how alacrity is applied into an AoE around the phantasm and/or make slow even moderately useful in PvE and/or change the Phantasm summon to the beginning of the block, instead of the end and/or reconsider giving us an extremely-low DPS phantasm, when our class DPS is balanced around necessarily having high-DPS phantasms summoned.

I don’t expect the last one, I don’t even know it would be the right choice. But any combo of the first few would make it, maybe not Meta, but certainly viable as a PvE weapon, in the same vein as Focus.

I assume you have reasons for why the mobs shouldn’t drop loot/XP; I can even guess at what some of them might be, although, I don’t think I agree with the decision. However, I really feel an event in low-level zones, aimed at new players, should at least have XP gains. (Frankly, I think XP gains should be a universal feature of all non-ambient kills.)

Also, while the decision to not have mob drops is more understandable, it really makes the event feel less rewarding. Even if we had no problems with the overall reward structure, having mob drops make me feel like I’m getting something for my time in the midst of the event, instead of at that end. It’s a psychological thing, but I think it’s important.

Finally, as many others have said, the time/reward scale seems way off. It makes the event (and rewards) seem basically undoable for anyone who can’t just sit in game for most of the weekend.

That being said, mistakes happen. Thanks for acknowledging the issues here, and taking feedback on how to hopefully avoid them in the future!

ScribeTheMad.7614:

Won’t complain, it gives me a second so I can actually use one and still keep one to use to preview looks.

No complaints here! Just thought we should note it for everyone, since usually those kinds of limits are shown in the Gem Store/advertising.

Linken.6345:

lordkrall.7241:

Sarevok.2638:

I WP’d around to all close events I could completing them and have only come out with 16 stacks at most.

Dunno what you are doing.

I walked around with a small group completing events.

yea but there aint to many events on the map at one time, so getting 26 walking around sounds fishy if you aint on a guild organised map or sum

Edit
As shaaba said i usualy get 10-15 aswell completing events

If finishing events, I get into the low teens as well. And that’s if I am waypointing to the next event when one finishes.

Maybe lordkrall has discovered the new Meta Speedrun for the Mordrem event, I don’t know. But after playing a fair bit of this with a group yesterday, and heard lots of people talking about it, I can’t believe his experience is at all typical.

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

Donari.5237:

Just added, Total Makeover Kit 122 gems (normally 350).

Also Heroic Booster
1 for 105 (150), 5 for 445 (637), 20 for 1470 (2100).

Not that I recommend using gems on minor consumables, but if you want to, hey, it’s on sale.

ooo TMKs. Might get me a few of those.

Just fair warning, the TMK is limited to One Purchase at that discounted price.

Swift. And. Steady.

Starfall.6425:

Blooms:

4 days for daylies per map = 4×3×20 = 240 blooms
That means you need to get another 210 blooms through grind
Let’s say we play normally and not tag&run… that means we will always get 10-19 stacks which equal 10 blooms. In 4 hours (1 rotation + break) you therefor get 30 blooms.

To get the halo-potion you need EVERY DAYLY REWARD + 28 HOURS GRIND if you play casually.

Except that I, and I imagine a lot of people, only did one (or no) maps when everything was bugged and there were no apparent rewards. So that’s almost one full day’s less of dailies. Just something to keep in mind.

It’s kind of a combination. I agree, the main lack is that it’s just mind-numbingly dull. you travel in a blob, try desperately to get a tag, and then move on with the blob.

But mob drops are also kind of important (or something similar, in terms of rewards). During Halloween, those sparkles made me feel like I was making some progress on something, getting “richer,” even though I objectively knew there probably wasn’t much of value. With this event, I’ve only ever felt like I’m getting, if anything, poorer.

I agree with you that the problem is lack of reward and fun. But mob drops, even minor mob drops, is one way to make the individual events (stalks, haunted doors, whatever) feel rewarding.

It might also help if you go Esc —> Options —> Content Guide, and set Content Guide to “Hide Events and Personal Story.” Then, the arrow on the top right of your screen should point you to what you need.

(But don’t forget to change it back when you decide to do your story!)

Colton Hunter.4108:

Yeah I didn’t see anybody saying this is really fun. Saw a bunch of new people saying what are we suppose to be doing? Why are we running back and forth so much? What do we get for doing this for 30 minutes?…..oh nothing, we’ll I’m going back to starting zone then. That’s what I heard.

I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating:

It’s an event marketed to new players, that costs gold, gives no XP, and mainly rewards you with cosmetic end-game items. And I have no idea why.

ScribeTheMad.7614:

17 stacks, only 30 blooms, and 10 looked like they came from what I would guess Gaile called the daily bonus.

We’ll see in the next round, but I think you might have gotten it backwards. If anything, I would guess the 20 came from the daily bonus. (I kind of hope I’m wrong.)

ham.8209:

nightwulf.1986:

ham.8209:

a event where you must spend gold to get rewards. is not worth doing at all. not only that but with no drops of loot from kills is not worth doing even more so when there is no extra special items being dropped from the said event . all together not worth the doing of this event at all . nor worth wasting time on a useless event .

Sovereign weapons available during the Queen’s Jubilee cost gold as well as a Favor of the Pavillion. Just saying. There’s a precedent.

that might be but i will be not spending gold in event items at all. nor will i take poor drops . when i get that from farming reg content . all together i revert back to my post . and the so called precedent you speak of is a very pour one at that .

Frankly, I’m fine with throwing in gold for rewards. But this is an event largely marketed at new players, that costs gold, grants no XP, and consists almost entirely of the cosmetic stuff that new players are least interested in.

…what.

Selkirk.4218:

they just dropped this junk on top of the existing maps. the other events are still running while the mordrem are invading?… didn’t anybody plan or play this stuff before pushing it out?

I don’t know… out of everything wrong and broken with the event, my favorite thing was watching a convoy of Bandits wandering into the middle of a horde of dragon minions, apparently without a single care in the world. It made my day.

Xeno Mezphy.3145:

It’s really simple. They don’t want to give you the wrong information and the nature of video games means that information could change on the backend at any time.

And if they don’t have that kind of info nailed down when the event has technically been live for over 7 hours now, that’s… terrifying for an entirely different reason.

zonic.5261:

As you are probably aware events dont even rewards karma, gold or experience, so what’s there to do?

I don’t even know if we’ve heard: is this intended, or is it another aspect of this bug? Because I’m really having trouble comprehending an event marketed to new players, that eliminates… every XP reward.

Xeno Mezphy.3145:

Anet doesn’t do precise numbers on rewards. You’re not going to get that information. I’m not going to tell you to stop trying, but if the entire history of this game is any precedent, they’re not going to give you numbers. I’m seeing a lot of questions for this and I worry that people think they’re actually going to get a reply.

But we can usually work out how much we’ll need to farm, or if it’s worth it, based on what rewards we get as we do the event. That’s not working out so well today, which is why it would behoove them to change this policy, if only this once.

Do I expect them to? Not really, no. But they really, really should.

I don’t really understand how that Reddit post doesn’t have more upvotes. How is this not something we’re talking about, or at least aware of, as a fanbase?

This is maybe almost a minor issue, compared to the enormous bugs/problems here.But why was an event ostensibly aimed at new players created, which apparently rewards little to no XP? I can’t understand why mobs would give no XP or anything when killed.

Unless that’s all part of the bug, and it’s even bigger than we realize.

This issue has been brought even more to the forefront by this recent event. Until now, a DC might mean you miss out on a World Boss chest or being able to farm the sandstorm, but at least you still had the drops, gold, xp and karma from stuff you’ve already done. At most, you lost a few minutes of “work.”

In this event, individual sub-events apparently give no rewards. Mobs give no xp, and no drops. You could spend 25 minutes killing Mordrem, DC, and get exactly nothing for your time and effort. It’s… well, it’s just really poorly designed, especially since ANet has to know the constraints their system has with DCs.

Embolism.8106:

Like I’ve said a few times, Echo of Memory is phenomenal because it is a Blocking skill that’s affected by Phantasm CD traits, plus it can double-conjure Phantasms so it benefits twice from PoM; or four times with PoM and Chronophantasma. That’s 8s off its CD plus the CD of every other Phantasm, and every other Shattered Phant also reduces its CD, and… well, the end result is a LOT of Blocking as well kittenter fodder.

Plus Slow is pretty strong in PvP.

I’m still not entirely convinced by this, but it does make for an interesting build concept that I know I was thinking about trying in PvP, but didn’t get around to. I’m not entirely convinced because the usefulness of a single block skill in PvP has always seemed somewhat “meh” to me, so this just becomes a slow phantasm summon unless you’re placing yourself in front of your opponent’s blade. Which was a mindset I thought they were explicitly trying to walk us away from, with the trait changes.

That being said, it doesn’t really address that Echo of Memory is more-or-less entirely useless in PvE, without some kind of significant change.

Zenith.7301:

It’s also pretty sad seeing my Blurred Frenzy hit for 5-7k in berserker gear while my revenant’s Unrelenting Assault is 2 seconds of evade, a gap closer (teleports you to the target), and does around the vicinity of 14-16k damage.

And the mesmer autoattacks do so much less damage than my revenant’s autoattack, the phantasms can’t even make up for this sustained damage difference.

I just try not to think about Unrelenting Assault, honestly. I know Revenant probably still has some balancing ahead of it still, but it’s like someone sat down and thought, “What if we took Blurred Frenzy, took away all of the restrictions, added some utility, and pushed DPS right up through the roof?”