Guild Wars 2

Mounts bad, please NO.

I prefer to have a teleport cost adjusted according to the area I am in.

Teleport is alternative to mounts it just needs to be adjusted. Mounts will kill the idea of wandering around and doing events randomly. I personally do not want another conventional MMO.

Here goes my rant. It took several years for Anet to implement good LFG interface in GW1 so people will not need to abuse chat channels. This should have been implemented upon release.. at least a LFG interface for Dungeons.

I am sick of being muted after 3 or 4 LFG messages and I do pause between them. This totally breaks the fun of running a dungeon if you need to spend a lot of time assembling a party. Or trying to join a group and get muted in the process.

I do not think this is a major feature that a lot of developers have to be involved in order to be released, right?
We just need interface which provides the ability to enqueue for dungeons and browse for players based on dungeon filter….

It won’t happen. This will produce cookie-cutter builds and will encourage people to invest more heavily into arcana. Think what will happen if people abuse this (and they will).
With 30% off attunement cooldown if you invest 30 points in arcana you get 90% CD reduction which along with 20% CD reduction for skills in two elements will allow anyone to totally abuse low cd skills. Or if you invest 5-10 points into arcana you can get 20 points into 3 elements without sacrificing anything.
Similar goes with the first suggestion – what happens if you invest into fire and earth, lower skills cooldowns, lower the attunement cooldown AND invest 30 points in arcana?

The reason players invest heavily into arcana is the fact that traits are quite good. For example: evasive arcana, the elemental swap boon bonus + 33% chance for vigor on crit. Quite neat I must say. I personally always struggle between 4 major traits in arcana and I want only 2 for any other attunement as the rest are not so appealing.

If you want decent cooldown 15 points into arcana gives 30% CD for attunements which is pretty decent IMO. IF you want to get 3 attunements with decent traits there must be something you have to sacrifice which is the arcana trait.

The whole idea with the trait lines derives from GW1 – for each profession you had one unique attribute (now called trait) that increases overall performance and no particular skill. It was a must to heavily invest into it (at least untill the soft cap is reached). Then 3 other attributes that increase certain skill groups effectiveness. The same is here – arcana for Eles, Shatter reduction for Mesmers etc. Overall performance is important and players should spend some points into those lines.
Exactly the same model but better modeled in GW2. Just because your fire skills are still useful without fire attunement trait which was not the case before (they were useless).

I believe the way to go is to rework some traits to be more appealing (this goes for all professions not just ele). This with re-balancing some skills in terms of animation or cast delays would do the trick.

P.S. The biggest problem most Ele users have is that they mindlessly burst all their offensive skills and get to a point where everything is on long CD. You should consider what (and when) to use certain combination. Long skill chains are not always the way to go. For example: My combos usually consist of chains containing 2-3 skills not more. So I get somewhat decent might stack and still have skills to use when the boon is active.
P.P.S. – the second biggest problem which is common for all professions is that a lot of players search the forum for most common builds instead of trying to make one on their own. Also DO note that the game is relatively new so changes will happen and you probably will need to change your build at some point.

haha… it still requires skill, reflexes and situational awareness.. people are just trying new alts lol. And I personally see other classes more often. Your argument is invalid unless trolling.

I have both and I still cannot decide They are like lv 55. When I get bore of Ele I go Mesmer and vise versa. Elementalist can engage multiple mobs with the same effectiveness as if it was one mob. The problem with Mesmer is if your target dies, the illusions die too and you are vulnerable to attacks. However this is remedied by the trait that gives clone spawn on dodge.

Both classes are totally fine.

P.S. And on Mesmer you will miss the variety of combo fields for ele

and it can be earth trait, too

So it is worthless because you people do not need it. Others will want alternate approach in their builds and use the signet only. They will call it useful. The bonus is good, it is by no means worthless… it is called variety.

Yup, Apple should patent the iword – procecute any use of words starting with ‘i’. Then there will be no confusion

You can also try S/D. But by no means do not stick to single weapon when leveling. It is more fun and you actually learn the class much better when you swap weapons once in a while.

yup, this ^

<15 chars tralala>

Good video. The thing is – the zerker is no near as powerful so I did not abuse it anyway, so for me cannot be used as foo strategy (still leveling). So I usually shatter it after first round. And I am one of those guys who like versatility so I always combine skills and change weapons regardless of power.

To be honest it seems most (but not all) of the complaints are towards the fact the skill is broken – izerker is practically brain dead when spawned. Granted, you should not rely on single skill and I cannot uderstand how one can center his/her build towards just izerker but maybe it is just me.

You are right about the whining though – the skill got too many tears. It is partially a problem with the community. Instead of making up strategies and builds on their own, a lot of ppl want a ‘perfect rotation/build/cookie-cutters’ strategies despite the fact that trait respec is cheap so you can actually experiment. And there are very few constructive posts. Much worse that GW1 community IMO but hopefully people with shake off the straightforward thinking at some point.

P.S. I do not want to offend anyone it appears a lot of players migrated from WoW and similar MMOs after years of playing it. I also played it for like 2 years and I see the common bad symptoms between the communities and raw-power-over-tactics-wins-all bullkitten.

There is also one more problem with LoS. From a specific location you try to throw a phantasm out and you get ‘obstructed’ message. However, from the very same location, scepter’s confusion beam can actually hit the target. So yeah, LoS calculations are quite buggy when there is terrain elevation.

Confusion has to be powerful. It should be not like other conditions slowly ticking your hp. It must have some shutdown mechanism – either you stop casting or risk to kill yourself The mesmer is unique class and sadly Anet are kind of trying to make it more similar to other classes (phantasms summon is physical attack, confusion is blockable by ‘block’ skill etc.) I fear it will lose its flavor soon.

• Reduced miss chance on channeled skills by 5%. All channeling skills now have 90% chance to miss.

The problem is those are not attacks at all.
There is always a way around..and this is not the point. Universal blockers (except invulnerability state) are usually a bad idea. Reducing skill types is also making gameplay more straightforward. Calling attack something that does not land damage right after casting is finished and does damage repeatingly and is called ‘phantasm’ is just wrong. Especially for Mesmers – where is the mesmerizing effect they are all about, hm? Blocking mind attack with physical protection skill, ye ..gg!

Embolism.8106:

….

The point Anet is trying to make is that Illusions are not pets, they are spells cast on the opponent’s mind: hexes if you will: that could be removed by destroying its physical manifestation.

This is the exact reason they must not be considered as attacks. You cannot mess with peoples’ minds because they use block or you are blinded?? Confusion should also not obey those rules either.

Without actual hexes Mesmer is less of a Mesmer..or we should have real hexes then?

Post your stats please.

Also, the ranger may have specced in pet dmg..because usually pets are ignored in sPvP.

I have lv 49 Ele and 39 Mes. I kind of play them in parallel as I cannot decide between those two

Ele has the same dynamic combat style so it is good for an alt if you want similar experience.

Well, we need more base HP and that is a fact. Increasing it would enable us to use more various builds. And maybe some base damage tweak. We mainly need fixes in skills though, maybe some in traits, too.

Thing like Ride The Lightning, unjustified ‘misses’ etc. Like Dragon tooth – usually useless as in order to hit a target you either need to be in melee range or the target needs to be ranged (and it does not do much of a damage). Stuff like this.

I do agree the class is challenging and highly mobile and for me it is tons of fun to play. I do not want it to be less challenging just fixed.

And it is not weak – some things just do not work.

I think fixing the other classes and some skills/traits is the way to go. Nerfing utilities of a class will not fix broken or non-competitive stuff in other classes. Currently all classes need some fixing in one way or another.

And I do not mean to offend anyone, just expressing my thoughts that the grass always look greener on the other side.

PvP balancing takes time and precise planning. I expect to have much more balanced PvP a year or so after release. Rushy decisions will lead to the opposite.

Pressing the right buttons in the right situation is almost always a win for any class. Its peoples’ fault that they use straightforward builds. For example, the majority of warriors use centric 100B builds (immobilize+100B is also just few buttons that work). This does not mean there are no other options. I have tried other builds that work well too.

I understand what you mean but mesmers here are all about control and utilities. Maybe it needs some more complexity added in some way but if you take away either control or survivability, the class will be useless.

Other classes need some more options for PvP so the build pool is increased.

But you cannot take away the strongest side of a class as it will break. It appears the above complaints go around the fact that mesmers are highly effective vs melee oriented characters.

Should I complain that my Elementalist can be few hitted from glass cannon thief if they catch me off-guard?
Warriors are meant to soak damage and deal such, they are not highly mobile class. Classes are different.

AND do not forget the PvP is team based, not 1v1. Pair with someone who can deal with those mesmers and you can take the rest. Discussing a class strengths in a vacuum and ideal conditions is just ridiculous.

P.S. Mesmers are tricky class with bag full of tricks that can be emptied quite fast if they do not play well. And we cannot compare with GW1 as back then they were much bigger nukers. Backfire (now confusion) can make you nuke yourself if you do not pay attention.

P.P.S. It appears that a lot of people playing a bulky characters are selfish and do not play as part of a team, which is more of a problem than class issues. This and that people always try to find the cookie-cutter. Then they complain when they get countered.

Mesmers are fine, people just fear them :P

I guess it works when foes are immobile, knocked down etc. Still 5% damage increase is nothing by itself…

I am sorry for the stupid question but where are your teammates at that time?

P.S. This profession is quite hard to deal with on 1v1 anyway.

I think there is also a finishing animation after the execution time in which case the skill is already activated. So there is some small delay. The queue system is from GW1 and if I remember correctly you could interrupt animation for auto attack but here the auto attack is skill #1 which might be part of the issue (my issue ).

Mesmers have always been a pain for heavy melee oriented classes like Warriors and such but cannot advise on any counter tactics as I haven’t played warrior myself. I will suggest you to try a Mesmer in PvP and check what might be fa fault in yours or their tactics.

Greatsword mesmers depend on range and cannot block any attack with weapon skill (except for #5 skill) as long as they use this weapon.

I have seen this but yersterday I was totally annoyed about this on the said skill.
It seems to me that if your toon is performing some sweep animation and you hit the blurred frenzy skill, it will delay or not take effect until the previous animation is over.

Can anyone confirm? Because if this is so (and not lag or some stupid mistake on my end) it will be quite bad. This is an oh’crap skill and in my opinion it must be executed immediately interrupting any current animations. Same goes for interrupts. Because I expect to evade/interrupt/block almost immediately. I use such skills when the opponents animation for a hit already begun and I can take 1/2 execution time but cannot take 1/2 execution time + 1/2 sec delay

Just want to confirm if this is the case or if I miscalculated somehow.

@OP – I feel you BUT… every build/class has its counterpart. So you cannot take a mesmer alone but this is not 1v1 tournament. Do not expect to take everyone down. Change builds, take a rifle etc. As Elementalist (using it for PvP) I also totally hate to take the rifle damage from behind… I feel like I am being squashed. Try it in my face… different story.

Mesmers need utility to survive. If this is nerfed they will be too easy to kill. Some Mesmers in GW1 were actually even more spikey.. 2 skills that cannot be cleansed were capable if draining your HP extremely fast. If there were hexes in GW2 it probably would make you quit.

The one thing I am sure of – whatever class and build you choose for PvP, there always will be another build to counter yours. There are also many Warrior newbie players dealing massive damage, also thieves… So your argument is not quite valid.

P.S. Visual lag is usually symptom for problems with graphics card resourses and also network lag – if it is lagging on certain animations it is the video card. I do not have any problems with my Radeon 5850 and it is by no means top notch.

Also, a good mesmer is the one you cannot catch or cannot bash to death.

Besides the staff Ele does always apply conditions. It is good for PvE solo and PvP just because one cannot cleanse it all the time. Look at conditions as a nice addition to the other damage you make.

Also, Earth magic provides some defense, toughness and condition damage increase which is not bad at all. As I said, nice addition but do not consider it as only source of damage as it will fail in certain situations.

I have tried all-round build in PvP and results were good enough. 20 earth/20 arcana the rest water/fire (whatever works better). ~2k attack, +~950 or so condition damage and ~2.3 toughness along with divinity rune. All this with increased precision from items (46% critical chance) and you have free base damage increase which works good with multiple projectile weapons. I can see this working even better in PvE especially with burning chance on crit or Glyph of elemental power.

Conditions can be cleansed but direct damage can be reduced via toughness and the reduction is permanent. So there is no ideal situation.
I personally choose the middle ground. The big pro about conditions is that it really works well on glass cannons in PvP and ticks while kiting in PvE

I only use S/F in Dungeons for the utility it offers. And only when get owned with other weapons…

The problem is not the number of skills you get from weapon swap but the possible chains. Imagine s/d swapping to d/f or s/f? You can dish out conditions, good damage, some cc and heals then swap for more and finish with protection skills + blinds+invulnerability..all in one… way too OP.

+1 for out of combat swap though, it is very annoying to open inv screen that often.

Just Logitech G700 mouse. The 4 side buttons are just perfect (+3 on top left). Still a bit heavy for gaming mouse but I got used to it and now feels great.

4 side buttons for F skills (for Mesmer as well) The 3 buttons are for utility.

There are some changes needed but people are exaggerating. Some skills and traits need tweaking, maybe some more base HP and base raw damage but that’s it. Certainly we do not need the WoW mage style where you can map half of your skills to a macro and be successful.

In my opinion, most of the players problems come from the fact that you need to use the synergy between skills and CC effectively. And also because they look at PvP as solo mode instead of team play. No class beats a good team.

It is not a classic mage but this is why I like GW2.

I’d say something is wrong with a class if you can succeed with totally blunt tactics

P.S. OP raised 2 eles to lv 80 and does not like them. Either a troll or a very sad person…
P.P.S. Generally WoW dedicated players would not like GW2 mechanics and this is why I like GW even more. Maybe it is only me but this is the only MMO I would play.

The plain dps of the staff is not high at all. You cannot do reliable vulnerability stacking with the autoattack. Even if with the storm spell I do not see good vulnerability stacks.

A 50/50 bleed/burn may not be so OP after all, due to the attack speed and projectile speed. Other professions can stack those more reliably anyway. Or it could be 40/60 in favor of the bleeding..or confusion or something ELSE.
Or just increase attack speed.

But as it is now, the vulnerability chance is not helping, it is messing with condition stacking for the other two.

P.s. As a side note, for this class vulnerability just does not seem to fit…it is master of illusion not of armor breaking..

It has like 33% chance to proc and is useless below 10 stacks(ok, maybe 5 at least). If this is done, mesmers will have 50% chance to bleed or burn which can somehow compensate for slow projectile/attack speed.

Honestly I believe vulnerability is just broken. You need to stack it a lot to make use of it. Probably maybe just give it a single stack like burning but 10-15% more damage on target, just fixed debuff.

Dance baby, dance If you do not like the idea of switching attunements constantly, do not play it. This is one of the changes from GW I like the most. I so wanted to be able to master all attunements

It needs fixes but so do most of the classes.

Meteor. and Meteor shower. Not sure why it is not here (meteor) but it was quite a spell. Same with meteor shower – it came with a cost handicapping you but when it hits you kind of feel it. One of those two was always on my skill bar.

Double Dragon (double fire attack). All other elite damaging spells actually. The brought a flavour to the battle. I still remember those train builds where the ele casts armor of earth and basically nuking me in coulple of seconds from point blank range with Double Dragon as a finisher. Sure, there has to be balance and I am not demanding to get the GW behavior but such skills do make things more versatile. People who played GW know what I am saying.

Same for mesmer’s hexes.

I hope such skills will be implemented in future. Maybe not with the same power, for sure, but with similar ideas.

What about you?

Ok, I am embarrassed time to delete a thread..but judging by your reply it can use more features.. so I am half wrong

Basically this. GW had this implemented years after release and I do not see a reason not present in GW2 from day 1. It had a LFG panel even for quests… now we need this for Dungeons.

Getting muted after 3-4 messages is annoying as hell (there should be some limit but still) especially when looking for players before a dungeon. And with such interface it will be much easier and no LFG spam on the chats.

For me the lack of this feature is a step back.

Here is one more reason for PvP/PvE split. For mesmers in particular the shatter skills e.g. mind wrack. PvE – have the clones teleport to the target when shattering. PvP – leave them running toward the target..make cooldowns more in PvP but less in PvE. In short people will not complain for PvE class balance that much(if at all) rather than PvP. You cannot make ability viable in both, for some it won’t work. Another example is the Ele Whirlpool – nerf damage in PvP and leave it increased in PvE.. If we go down the path to balance PvP via PvE skill nerf (no PvP versions) we all will end up killing mobs much slower and I am sure we do not want this (a time sink present in a lot of MMOs ).

I miss the ‘thumper’ build, too. It was quite fun back in GW1