Guild Wars 2

musu.9205:

4/5 trait lines don’t have condition removal traits . Only dom line has a trait for torch .
It’s clear to see how you get locked to that trait line.
It’s like anet kept trash everything wars have and you guys just tell wars :you have hambow +healing signet +Ire ,it’s your fault not to play it .

Another honest thought tho if anet removes portal from mesmer we would finally have slot for good condition removal skill when you have nothing to do for your team .

Domination:
Cleansing Conflagration – Torch skills remove conditions. Reduces recharge on torch skills.

Dueling:
Mantra Mastery – Reduced recharge on mantras. (Power Clense & Mender’s Purity)
Harmonious Mantras – Mantras can be activated three times before needing to be channeled again. (Power Clense & Mender’s Purity)

Chaos:
Master of Manipulation – Reduces recharge on manipulation skills. (Arcane Theivery)
Cleansing Inscriptions – Activating a signet removes a condition.
Chaotic Dampening – Increased toughness while wielding a staff or trident. Reduces recharge on staff and trident skills

Inspiration:
Glamour Mastery – Reduces recharge on glamour skills. (Null Field)
Mender’s Purity – Remove a condition when you heal. (when traiting mantras and using the mantra heal this ability is used frequently)
Temporal Enchanter – Glamour skills last longer.
Shattered Conditions – Using a shatter skill removes a condition from you and allies around you.

Illusion:
Illusionary Invigoration – Recharge all of your shatter skills when your health drops below the threshold. (combined with Shattered Conditions)
Illusionary Persona – Shattering illusions creates the shatter effect on you as well. (SC)

3 of the lines have traits that explicitly say “removes a condition” and all lines have traits that effect our ability to remove conditions in some way.

Zappix.7928:

I’m not against changes at all, but disproportionate changes to things that weren’t that big a deal? Hmmmm.. Not for PvE when most of the QQ was coming from WvWvW and sPvPers.

Berserker’s Power Increased damage based [sic] how much adrenaline you have built.
Adrenal Health Regenerate health based on adrenaline level.

These things are a big deal when you have nearly unlimited maximum adrenaline. When these two aspects are applied to a high armor high health high dps class it makes that class far outshine the competition.

The worst I have seen was Warhammer that implemented a system where if 2+ players used the same AoE that overlapped areas, only one of the AoEs did damage. Imagine 75 warriors using thousand blades and the 1 player there standing tall at half health.

A 25 stack cap is annoying during World Boss Fights, but outside of that situation it is a decent way to prevent players for insta-dying and condi-dodge/run away mob fights from overwhelming other aspects of the game.

I am definetly in support of raising the cap for Champ level monsters.

Zappix.7928:

I agree that adrenaline bursts needed to be toned down a tad (for PvP, why they haven’t split skills like they did with GW1 I have no idea get on that anet!), but this? Way too much with very little to compensate. PvE is not PvP, what is overpowered to players in tournaments or 1v1 should not affect the majority of the players in PvE, where bosses can 1 shot you, or have an insane amount of health.

This is the bit that throws me off on these forums. The “burst” is/was a managable effect in PvP, it was the maxing adrenaline and holding on to it that made the warrior OP in the eyes of many players. Warrior is my second most played class. I played it when I wanted to only somewhat pay attention to the game. This was because holding onto adrenaline was a powerful tool that speced way beyond the benefits of any other class (and yes, I have an 80 of all classes).

Sin.4130:

Brigg.6189:

I’m not sure I get what the problem is here.

The problem is that nearly nobody use dual wield In GW2 because you have absolutely no advantage from using this. It is weaker , more expensive then any other weapons set

I would take that more as a “two handed weapons for warriors are too powerful” situatio myself. I went duel wield a couple of months ago because GS and its uberness began to drain on my patience.

I have not tried out a Mantra build since the patch, however I did run Mantras a good bit pre-patch, so take my comments as you will:

GS & Staff is a combination I would not use. 1 handed weapons have many invulnerabilities/blocks that help you survive which is key in a non-ideal burst build. I tend to think of staff as a complimentary weapon to melee weapon sets and great sword as our main ranged weapon.

Your domination line seems to be aimed toward interrupts. This is one very fun yet micro-management required path. When going the interrupt route for dueling I like to take Furious Interruption over Harmonious Mantras. 3 insta-casts is nice, but if you are focusing on animations and interrupts FI gives you the timely dps burst to take full advantage of your vigilance. Additionally, I long ago gave up on Mantra Mastery. Depending on which 1 handed weapons you use, I would go with either Blade Training for faster Distortion recovery or Retalitory Shield for damage from defense.

If you chose not to go with FI (which I often do), Restorative Mantras is a great place to add your extra points. Spamming Mantra of Pain (which has a very quick cooldown) adds up the aoe healing very well.

Dunno…this was a pvp build with a very high skill cap that really frustrates people that are used to PU or Shatter mesmers…it is virtually a whole new class Post patch I am sure some things have changed

“Warriors are masters of weaponry who rely on speed, strength, toughness, and heavy armor to survive in battle. Adrenaline fuels their offensive power—the longer warriors stay in a fight, the more dangerous they become.”

I was, and have continued to be, shocked by how well my warrior maintained adrenaline. I am surprised more of you did not see this coming.

I am going to start this by saying I do not know whether I like or dislike this action (specifically as it pertains to the mesmer).

Good Points:
1) Focus fire that does not require much time typing to achieve or voice chat
2) Gives a strong benefit to players with high battlefield awareness
3) Allows one strong player to help weaker players identify which model to attack

Bad Points:
1) Reduces the fundamental “misdirection” aspect of mesmer class design
2) Pigeon holes many mesmer specs into slotting specific utility skills for stealth
3) Causes intra-group animosity as only 1 team target is allowed, and it is very frustrating when you have a mesmer targeted and someone shifts the target to another target…usually in an effort to convince everyone to kill a different opponent
4) One player can blow the mesmers misdirection against all opponents

Suggestions (good or bad):
1) Have the cross hairs appear over clones as well
2) Limit which players can change targets/call targets
3) Eliminate marking targets in SPvP matches
4) Time gate uses of marking
5) In SPvP make marked targets personal instead of team wide

Dunno…. I did not notice this being touched upon in the ready up as a mesmer class weakness and found myself wondering what the rest of the community thought about the topic.

msalakka.4653:

Part of it is that people don’t like to lose, and they don’t like to fight annoying opponents, like thief and mesmer, to begin with. I’ve gotten numerous “****ing PU mesmer, get a real build” whispers from enemies I’ve downed, and I don’t even run PU. But I guess all mesmers are PU mesmers to people who don’t understand the job’s mechanics/skills.

On the other hand, it is a powerful skill. It’s not my standard choice for the slot since it has a long cd and it’s fairly easy to avoid, but it certainly has its uses. It’s perhaps a bit too strong against MM necros, but this post-patch condispam circus has eased up whatever hesitations I had about using it.

I love it. I get that on occasion myself…usually when running an interrupt or retaliation build as those builds are rare enough that they can really confuse novice players.

Back when the game was released, running through the line multiple times would stack the duration. As you pointed out, that was ridiculous.

They decided to fix it, and for over a year if someone ran through the line with no speed buff, it would buff them but no other speed buffs would increase the duration…painful to groups. You really hoped that all mesmers running with you knew not to ever use there speed buff if you were in a group.

Currently it will not increase an active duration, but it can add a speed buff if none exists and that buff can have its duration increased by any buff other than the line. While not ideal, it is much better then the first two renditions. I find myself dropping it in group runs just in case someone missed the guardian circles that I am following etc etc.

Is that chest limited to level 80s?

I had the mail bug…well maybe call it the mail confusion. As for the other bugs…not so sure but I have found that many random glitches are resolved if you guest to another server. Some things do not seem to get fixed by logging out or closing down the game but resolve when swapping servers. Dunno…just a thought.

Hi mad bomber. I played a mesmer as my first class (on my way to my 7th 80 now) and I also struggled a bit. While it is very true that combat awareness is probably causing most of your issues, there are a few things you can do to mitigate your downed state issues until you get better.

1) Two handed ranged weapons. Nothing says I need to chill for a moment and get a sense of my surroundings better than using a GS or Staff. I do not recommend both weapons simultaneously, however 1 or the other is a good thing.

2) Power/toughness/vitality gear. This is available through karma, gold or wvw. I bought a full exotic set of this when I was a new 80, and have slowly been replacing pieces as my skill level has increased. I started replacing Weapons than trinkets 1 at a time with zerker, and now I am in the process of replacing armor with assassins.

3) Etherial combo fields are your friend. Chaos armor is great for survivability in PvE.

4) 20 points in inspiration. Weird I know, but I have recently fallen in love with a mild mantra build (really Mantra/Phantasm build). Menders purity is great for condition removal if you use Mantra of recovery. Restorative mantras is great when coupled with Mantra of Pain. Mantra of Pain has a really short recovery time and Power Spike has a quick unload time. Spamming Mantra of Pain with the occasional Mantra of Recovery is an effective way to AOE heal your party or more importantly yourself.

Lots of other stuff to learn, but these are the tips that have gotten me through while out surviving most PUGs.

Intigo.1653:

You clearly don’t know what you’re talking about. Elementalist mobility is still good, but its nowhere NEAR the best in the game.

Contradicted by the devs in their recent interview…something about mobility and skirmishing is supposed to be best accomplished by theives, and currently eles far outshining them in this aspect.

Graybes.8251:

I’ve had this game since(before) release day and I remember when I first started playing I tried out every single profession and tried most weapon combinations for the first couple of days. Nothing seemed to click with me until I tried out this “weird” dual dagger elementalist and absolutely loved it. Back then every elementalist you ran into used scepter or staff. I remember never seeing other elementalists with dual daggers.

After playing for a bit I took a long break from this game and just came back a few weeks ago. Now it seems like d/d elementalist is one of the most popular builds in the game. What happened when I was gone?!

I would say October (I believe, bad with time) when ANET announced that bunker eles were over preforming.

Zenyatoo.4059:

Ele needs shorter attune swaps.

Ele in fire does respectable damage. Maybe not supreme, but respectable.
Then you have every other attunement. Which is really geared more towards a specific outcome (survival in earth for example is a reflection, the cripples, ETC. Air boasts CC, the pushback, the blind, the stun, and water is heals and a chill)

In a typical scenario, an elementalist will be in fire magic. He/She will then need to use some form of utility. Perhaps a monster has started running at our ele. Thinking quickly, they attune to earth and cripple the monster, while moving away. Our ele is safe for the moment, BUT now doing far less damage, as earth has less damage than fire.

Sadly our ele is now stuck in earth for another 10+ seconds. That’s 10 seconds of clearly lower DPS, without any utility to cover for it (as the other earth skills are now on cooldown)

Imagine a warrior in the same situation. He or she simply switches to a rifle, cripples the monster, and then switches back to greatsword. While in rifle, simply crippling, putting some vuln, and then a volley (which is more DPS than the greatsword auto attack for sure) takes up the 5 second weapon switch cooldown. The warrior has lost basically no DPS during the entire period.

No other class must give up so many seconds of their maximum damage for their utility. Only elementalists (ironic, as the class was supposed to be designed around switching for utility as a benefit rather than a negative)

Elementalists really only have 2 attunements – Fire, and waiting for fire

If they changed attunement cooldowns to 10 seconds untraited, and 4-5 traited (and then obviously nerfed certain traits that give effects on attunement swaps) the ele would be much better off. As you could now attune to gain utility for a specific situation, without feeling like you’re about to be useless for the next 10 seconds.

20 skills means jack kitten if 10 of them are for specific situations, and you give up a good portion of your damage if you want to tap into them.

Paragraph by paragraph:

Fire, yes this is a good damage attunement, more importantly it is a great combo field attunement. Earth…try to not view it as a defensive attunment, yes it gives you defence, but it also has the potential to deal more damage than fire if you utilize the fire combo fields and bleeds. Air increases mobility, allows your next phases to be more under your control, also good defence. Water is not just healing, water can do alot of damage if you so choose to spec that direction.

I would never say “In a typical scenario, an elementalist will be in fire magic.” In fact I would say the exact opposite. If I start an encounter in fire, I messed up. If an enemy is closing in on me and I need an out, earth is not my choice. Earth for me is all about keeping enemies close to me, immobile, knocked down and kicking their butts…Air is where I would go in that situation. Air does less damage, yes, but now I can swap to either earth or water to deal out some decent damage.

Stuck in earth for 10+ seconds…I dont get it. Do we only have 2 attunements?

Warrior has only 5 weapon skills available for the next 5 seconds. Ele has 15 more to choose from….

Hmm…. Yea stumped here, cant really argue a complaint about the style design of the class…except we still seem to be assuming that fire is our only/best damage source. For this time we lack the access to fire combo fields which we can use by other specs to up our dps…but than again we have already cycled through fire so we already have 8-16 stacks of might.

This is the problem you encounter with the ele…fire is a great setup attunement in D/D, not the heart and soul of it.

Cycle, re-cycle and continue to cycle. The D/D ele is designed with an incredible synergy of skills, combo fields and combo finishers. Rarely ever have I thought man will this attunement ever come off of cooldown.

…specific? giving up damage?…

Please take away from this topic that learning combo fields/combo-finishers/buff chains and skill synergy would make a player way better at all aspects of the game. Google the combo field finisher interactions. Learning them is key to this class (and several others). If you learn how to utilize them you will improve vastly on any class you play.

Soulview.4532:

I don`t know if you notice this but when i understand it right I talk about cc & immobilization? Not about snare.

You do realize snare is a dominate form of CC in most MMOs, correct? Snare = CC mate.

LordByron.8369:

stuff (just because I thought it was funny the first time)

ugg….

uggg….

ugggg….

Byron, how many 80s do you have, what classes are they, and how many hours have you played on each? Not being a smart ellic here, this just really does sound like the arguments given by so many eles during the first month of play (after which, as you may know, they were near the top of the list for nerfs).

eldain stenlund.4306:

iam saying, and iam not alone if looking around the forum. elemental class is stupidly badly designed. and weak.

On the flip side, many (including the devs if you watch the twitch feed) find the ele to be the strongest class in many different play styles in this game. Weak is a very relative term, all classes are weak in something, ele is strong in more than most classes are even able to attempt to accomplish.

eldain stenlund.4306:

sry.. i have not got my kitten handed to me by an elemental.
i play warrior mostly in www. so. they fear me. more than i fear them.

sry.. i have not got my kitten handed to me by an elemental.
i play warrior mostly in www. so. they fear me. more than i fear them.incompetent of playing this elemental class ? maybe.
i have got my elemental to lvl 11 as highest.. i have deleted that char spot countless times. all times after i have played the class a few mins, realising how incredibly much crap this elemental class realy are. then i hit delete button again.

Level 11, that explains it. Please sir do not think you understand a class enough, after just a few minutes, to make a “this class sucks” thread on the forums…it hurts the community.

Larynx.2453:

It’s like I traveled back in time to September.

lol, you sir just made my night…ahh september, the time before most eles realized there was anything but fire spec….

Bloodgruve.6038:

Darx.9842:

This seems viable, but are you sure about the end result? Symbolic power is only a 10% increase in symbol damage. And missing out on the valor line is missing out on 30% critical damage. Which is effectively +30% damage, 50% of the time. Plus no altruistic healing, or beefy Resolve. Healing from symbols isnt that great if I can remember.

Here is a good link to show effectiveness of Crit and Crit Damage. If you have a base 30% crit chance and a base 0% crit damage you’ll increase your overall dps by 11.5%, if you have 30% crit chance and 30% crit damage you’ll increase your overall dps by 12.4%. You effectively lose 1% overall damage by losing 30% crit damage from valor, if this table is correct. That seems odd but that’s what the table says…

I see symbols hit 3 times for ~500 and crit for ~1k when traited for Writs.

Blood~

Pretty sure the table reads 30% crit chance 0% crit damage = 15% increased damage, 30% crit chance 30% crit damage = 24% increased damage netting to a 9% difference in damage. The table seems to be a multiplier…i.e. 1.15 = normal damage * 1.15 or 115% of normal damage total.

LordByron.8369:

Bombul.2506:

It is not elitiest to not want to use an exploit, it is following the terms of service that we all agreed to follow when we singed up for this game.

ToS is useless again it has no meaning in most countries.
Said that…..Seems also you don t know what an exploit is….and spykits use was not an exploit.

The kit was meant to do exactly similar tasks.

You want to know what an exploit is?
Dying on switches is more likely to be one……i don t think any game strategy should involve character’s Death.

No meaning in most countries? This game has its own terms of service. Nomatter what government you live under while playing this game you must abide by the terms of service you agreed upon when entering the game. Failure to do so in not only inacceptable, but subject to ban for good reason.

Ioflux.4369:

Solution: Kill the mobs and quit whining. I just did this in lvl 40+ a few days ago, we killed the mobs, 2 people kept aggro and kited. Spykits made it easier. Too many people got spoiled by “easier” and refuse to learn new strats and rather complain here endlessly.

My new hero.

Khal Drogo.9631:

Minion of Vey.4398:

Nah, only time I kick people is if they go afk too long or lose link.

Sometimes OTHER people in the group didn’t want spy kits, so we didn’t use them. Obviously spy kits are the fastest way, it’s a freebie. But it’s not a big deal not using them either.

Err yes it WAS a big deal using the spy kits. And sorry if I want to make fights / puzzle / encounter easier by using a consumable and some elitists who don’t and hates them (scroll up thread for special kitten who kicks people from party from using them). I am not about to play with some kitten who insists on doing their own way, much less obey their directive, which is in fact less efficient based on nothing but virtual elitism.

If you don’t want to do an exploit / glitch (not a use of a consumable to non elitists) and party is perfectly capable of doing an encounter and the time difference is not huge like 20 minutes or more, fair enough. Even then it would be a suggestion to a group and not “ANET please ban these exploiters” or “I must stick to my virtual gaming ethics” etc.

It is not elitiest to not want to use an exploit, it is following the terms of service that we all agreed to follow when we singed up for this game.

LordByron.8369:

Sticks.9374:

I suppose you think I am l33t for wanting people to not stack under the bridge and wail away on Mossman too. What a joke lol.

no but i think its an acceptable strategy since ANET bugged the boss and refuses to fix it….

You know what is the other only strategy?

To look on the map where he is…ad i m glad to inform you that is another glitch abuse…..used as workaround.

Also that explains how people should stop to say L2P when people ask for fixes!

Wow…epitomy of every dungeon group I have ever rage quit.

Khal Drogo.9631:

GoZero.9708:

Dredge is perfectly possible without the spy kits (did a 38 group without them just now). It does, however, take much longer and require much more effort.

Kudos to you and your teammates, especially if it is a PUG party. May I also ask that have you used the tactic of tanking with one teammate to assist, whether have you reset at all and your party composition?

PUG and the highest anticipated tier of end game dungeon…are people really defending that this should be possible, or worse yet easy?

Folk.2093:

Khal Drogo.9631:

Folk.2093:

even the thief can’t do it all in stealth; if i remember right using any stealth ability while on the control panel interrupts it.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Shadow_Refuge

Uhh the control panel takes more than 10 seconds….

stretch the imagination…theif is not the button user…mesmer uses mass invis while not being the button user….

Khal Drogo.9631:

Zinkey.6983:

I hate spy kit methods, I refused to do them pre patch. Did a FoM 28 run earlier today, after kicking 4 people refusing to not use spy kits (the biggest challenge tbh), we did it without with no issues. If you struggle to keep up, you probably need to rethink your build/party/methods.

Kicking 4 ppl? Sounds like the reverse. Try the same at lvl 38 and pls report the results of your tactics, especially with 0 thieves. Thank you.

Sounds like the opinion of someone who cheeses every dungeon he goes into. Just because it is easier does not make it the right strategy. This change is proof that there was supposed to be other ways all along.

BaconCatTheGreasy.9542:

Renegade.6325:

Or consider a new strategy.

There is no way of doing the control panel without you being hit, there is no way to survive on the buttons long enough to distract them from the panel person.

The whole game is based on dodging but then punishes you for dodging by closing the door.

multiple classes have group invis, multiple classes have pulls, multiple classes have aoe for aggro….

BaconCatTheGreasy.9542:

50 second cool down on Ash Legion Kits.

Well, looks like it’s gonna be resetting till we get Water/Char/Swamp in a row.

Spy Kits were an abuse, and avoided the dungeon. This is not a game ending change, it is a slap in the face of everyone who thought they were pro because they knew where to buy the cheesing gear.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Let’s face it. Dungeons were intended for “coordinated teams of skilled players.” It’s pretty clear that there is a sub-set of the player base that has taken that to heart and learned how to do the dungeons to the point where they find them easy. On the other hand, we often see posts asking for nerfs and otherwise complaining about dungeon difficulty.

While the dungeons can be learned, let’s face it, there is a sub-set of the player base that will avoid this content because they don’t enjoy the steep learning curve. The idea of easy and hard mode dungeons is not new — wiser heads saw this need before I did. However, the changes to AC this past week gives new life to this topic.

Having an easier and a harder mode would accommodate both groups. Harder would challenge those who say dungeons are too easy. It might breathe life into dungeons for those bored with how easy they find them. Easier would provide access to those who avoid them like the plague now. Maybe it’s time to step back from the original intent of dungeons and please both groups?

This already exists, story is easy mode, explorer is hard mode. Many on these forums will argue that explorer should still be easy mode, but I guess lacking the “hard” tag has them confused.

If you want to add me to you friends, I regularly run low level fractals to get people used to the dungeon. Server does not matter anymore for this dungeon.

gw2lfg.com is very nice for forming a pug group

Party chat leaves you window when you leave a party. Anet still has access to it. What you encountered was that the majority of this community prefers to auto attack fights, not enjoy the game content.

The american way…the most you can get for the least effort.

Lets get good looking gear and never learn the fights.

Everyone uses this spot.

We won’t get banned or lose anything.

Do it or you are not a team player and we will kick you.

…

In the back of my head I really hope every time I screen shot and report in a dungeon the cheesers are getting, in the very least, suspended. Talk about ruining a game.

I agree that this filter should exist.

When guesting onto the main guild server, I do not get the reward chest for completing guild quests. This is painful for people spread across multiple servers. This could be a great way to bring the cross server guildies together, but not giving the reward is only encouraging those individuals to leave guild.

Worse, to me, is the people now who really are level 10-40 but still get rolled at level 10 because they have never learned the dungeon. They have jumped in groups way beyond their skill set and been carried by others soo far that they think they are masters of the dungeon but cannot even keep from being downed by the aoe from the end boss of the frozen fractal….ugg…rant off

Mesmer is the least DPS of the ranged classes. If you want to go glass cannon I recommend…well every other ranged class first. Mesmer shines as a support role.

Wow, never used focus or torch….i am soo confused by you.

Hammerguard.9834:

Greatsword: The phantasm is the only good damage that comes out of this weapon. Everything else including skill 1- at all ranges – does pathetic damage.

Staff: Decent damage but too defensive. Skill 2 forces player to port away and skill 1 projectile speed is too slow.

Scepter: Skill 1 attack rate is too slow and weak. Skill 2 and 3 are good. No AoE on this thing making it horrible for PvE. EDIT: Skill 3 cast startup is too long.

Sword: Forces player to get up close to do any damage. Skill 2 is too slow and the range is pathetic.

Sword off-hand: It’s just crap…

Torch: Skill 4 is good, skill 5 is trash.

Pistol: Decent damage to single target…

Focus: Skill 4 is only good for PvP and skill 5 is only good for PvE. It’s a horrible weapon. I feel the only reason people use it is for the swiftness because that’s the only mobility mesmers have besides blink. Mesmers who don’t want to use focus – I don’t blame them – are forced to get rune of the centaur.

I think mesmers need some serious changes to their weapons.

I see you have stuck around for the discussion hammer. I respect that.

Just a touch of background. I played mostly a necro in bwe3. My first toon live was a mesmer and she hit 80 before any other breached 20. Next I leveled an ele to 80, then a ranger, now I have a guardian to 53.

I became frustrated with mesmer in the 11-19 level range. Looking back it is obvious to me what my problem was…I did not bounce around through different weapons. The day I learned to use the sword mh effectively was the day the mesmer started making sense.

There is much on this forum about mesmer being tied to traits. In a way this applies to all classes, but I do not see it as being an exceptional truth for mesmers. Rarely do I put more than 20 points in any trait line…this I cannot say about any other class I play.

Starting as a mesmer, I had to learn the mechanics of combat quickly to avoid death. Combo fields, dodges, buffs, debuffs…all matter greatly. Many classes can get by without this information. Does it make mesmer weak? I prefer to think it makes the player strong as he is forced to learn the game mechanics quickly.

Fast forward to toon #2…elementalist. While they force 2 times the weapon skills on you as compared to most classes, a strong understanding of combo fields makes this class a walk in the park. Without that understanding they can get by, but would mostly be viewed as a glass cannon dps. Why would I even bother using more than just dagger/dagger…oh I know, I can learn staff for a different playstyle…wait I have other weapon options…ehh…I stick with what I got.

Now ranger…what is a combo field any way?

Guardian…soo many instant cast abilities available at all times, spam your buttons and cool things happen.

I contest that the mesmer/ele design are far superior to the ranger guardian. Learn how the game works, learn quickly and succeed. Learn slowly and be held back in levels for a time.

Anywho…back on topic…mesmer weapons from my perspective:

Greatsword: this is our long range AOE and kiting weapon, it does decent damage

Staff: most effective as a mid/close range weapon. The defensive nature of the abilities can be deceiving as it is most effective by laying out combos/fields, while bouncing buffs back onto yourself, to be utilized by a melee off weapon set. Wind up with staff, swing with melee.

Scepter: never got the hang of this weapon, I just do not like it.

MH sword: incredible defensive capability in #2 once you get good at timing. Good cc with #3, boon striping with #1, great damage with #2…overall great weapon

OH sword: interesting option. I like to use it against glass cannons and watch them melt. In pve it does not get much use from me as I use many other option for defence, but it can be pretty sweet. CC and defence rolled into 1 button with a decent damaging phantasm to boot.

Torch: 2 blast finishers (our only access to blast finishers mind you), burning and stealth while being able to remain mobile with 1 button push…trash is far from how I would describe this weapon. And then there is a phantasm….

Pistol: not my cup of tea, but if you are trying to be a dps ranged kind of guy this thing hits like a truck. #5 chain cc including a stun ftw

Focus: imo greatest off hand weapon in this game. #4 is a speed boost with unlimited recipients, an unlimited cripple, grants retailion (aoe retaliation if somone thinks to use a blast finisher), an aoe knock down, an aoe interrupt, and an aoe pull. #5 does decent aoe damage from long range, blocks projectiles, reflects projectiles, is a phantasm subject to buffing via traits or use kittenter fodder for damage, condition application, healing, defence. Greatest 2 button weapon ever!!!!

go with people who know how to dodge and heal?

shaktiboi.5194:

dani.1956:

I just did it few hours ago , i can say that the burning is bugged ! Even if you move you get burning effect on you after the first boss shield and 2nd and 3rd ! Nobody in particular causes that burning so must be a glitch ! Maybe a dev could look into it !

Edit: Got to love when players give advices how to finish something when thats not the point of the thread !

Yes, this. This is exactly what nailed us so bad. We never wiped on this one before (but lots of downs and ups). Today: wiped 4x in a row and barely scratched the champ.

The lots of downs and ups is what is causing people to tell you how to complete the dungeon. If you consistantly have 1 or more people going down in this fight it will become very difficult. Do not consider that the normal result of this fight. Consider it a spec/gear/strategy check.

Brennus.1435:

RedStar.4218:

During the first few weeks you could find such gems as “Level scaling is horrible, I don’t understand why a max level character can die in Queensdale, this should be fixed !” or “I don’t want to help my friends level in low level zone because the repair fee is hindering me”

I’m fairly certain some players still find those zones hard. But that’s not the problem. You can find them hard, at first. But you honestly can’t expect that the difficulty is too high.

That’s insane, haha. I think the only time I’ve ever found Queensdale hard was when I was level five and accidentally wandered into the swamp where everything is level 15 or so. That wasn’t very pleasant.

I still notice sometimes that people approach this game kind of odd. I ran into someone in Orr who had somehow leveled to 80 and wasn’t aware of dodging and was complaining about how complicated Orr was and that it should be it’s own dungeon and stuff. I can understand if you’re new to MMOs and the game completely, but how do you get to level 80 and not realize you can dodge? Even by accident.

lol, similar story…

A few weeks back I was in Orr and there was a serious question asked in map chat “how do you complete the dodge daily”. The whole place went silent waiting for the punchline. A few moments later the same person asked again and people explained double tapping and key mapping. This was a level 80…guess we may want to look into reducing the difficulty of Orr for this guy.

SynfulChaot.3169:

haviz.1340:

He’s talking about seemingly the hardest dungeon (Arah) so obviously it shouldn’t be targetted at the average player, for them you have 5-6 other easier dungeons which are said to be easy for majority of players which means he’s below average if he complains about those easier dungeons.

Dungeons are supposed to be challenging to the average player, so if someone is having trouble it does not necessarily mean they are below average.

haviz.1340:

Dungeons were advertised as a content for hardcore players, they should increase their difficulty level, not normalize it to average player.

Increasing the difficulty of existing dungeons will just drive more people away from dungeons, not invite more in. Yes, a small subset of ‘hardcore’ players might like it (hardcore players tend to complain regardless), but they would lose a lot more than they would gain.

Iehova.9518:

Considering the uproar of hutt burt this change would bring, it is preferable to implement a hard mode for full exotic/ascended DM teams.

I would fully support a ‘Hard Mode’ for those that want a challenge. That way those that want a challenge get their challenge (maybe) and those that just want to enjoy the game still can.

I am soo confused every time I see this comment. Didn’t they try to design explorer mode to be just that, hard mode? Soo…we don’t want to have a challenge in hard mode, we just want to be able to do it, but maybe they should create a hard mode?

Ahh…that makes my brain hurt.

Enundr.9305:

Leo G.4501:

Enundr.9305:

and you can imagine how many of these new players will see this then say screw it after awhile , telling their friends and others to avoid the game because of this? its not an issue of the dungeon being challenging , there has been no real balance put before this was introduced , to have introduced it FIRST was the mistake , the balances should have been TOP priority THEN the no rez rush , and exploiting the issue? you think they could even get the opportunity to even rez someone in the lupi fight? yes they get LOTS of time to rez someone when lupi is doing his charge at them for a 1shot with little to no chance of getting back up , yes anyone wants to waste there time doing that , while avoiding aoe and hoping they dont get hit by this projectile thats easily to miss that 1 shot kos you. yes cause THAT is exploiting the thing and not a fight that is ridiculous with no form to mitigate half of it but just pure luck in most cases , or being one of the elite crowds that dont leave the computer.

EDIT: and the reason other games put in a system to prevent so called “rez rushing” ? cause they rely on the holy trinity crutch , where as we dont. We rely on dodging and constant movement. the system does not support no rez rush as it is (and no i dont want holy trinity but i also dont want this no respawn thing that is sorta a bad idea)

Everyone will always want to have things done their way, doesn’t mean it’s the right way. How were the devs suppose to balance encounters that were too tough when the metric used to fights is so badly skewed because people are exploiting WPs? They can’t tell if a fight is hard or not by how many times people WP back simply because people were NOT REZZING their team.

It’s a vicious cycle that keeps kittening people like you. You wanted them to rebalance fights so you don’t have to WP all the time from dying but you’re dying because your teammates aren’t helping you so it’s not clear if the fight is actually hard or if your team isn’t working together.

So no. No, you can’t have things handled your way. It’s not efficient.

And you can name practically any profession and I’m certain there are various skills that make rezzing teammates easier. I’d suggest keeping them around on your utility bar until you’re certain you won’t need them.

1) reread the part about some fights (like lupi) making it stupid to even ATTEMPT to rez someone , 2) as far as utility skills those only seem to affect DOWNED players , not dead. i know warriors can get a passive trait to make rez slightly faster , but with the previously mentioned fight like Lupi , its not going to help.

EDIT: and FYI i always tend to keep Spirit of Nature up on ranger , and have that passive skill on warrior for faster revives , doesnt help against a fight like lupi where everything is s 1shot ko.

Common misconception….Lupi is not a 1 shot KO, even on a caster. That is the result of poorly formulated gear/spec to experience ratio. Try adjusting all that is available to your character. When all adjustments fail, practice and learning his animations fail, and working with the same team to learn the fight fails, it is too hard. That is not the case with Lupi. He just happens to be one of the FEW bosses that is not a complete and total pushover for beserker spec and dps spam.

Nay of the Ether.8913:

Bombul.2506:

You can go to fractals level 40 at character level 2. If you die, should the dungeon be redesigned down to your character?

We’re not discussing fractals here, this is a CM thread, stop trolling. Fractals is fine. And if you do fractals 40 with a level 2, well you deserve every bit of horrid nightmares you get out of that lol. Now 10 and under, yes I have actually done those with a lvl 2 just fine. So again, stick to the dungeon we’re talking about and stop trolling.

Not surprised you completely missed the point. Explorable dungeons are the only end game content in this game. Should you have to be 80, no, but you should have an expansive knowledge of this game to be able to over come them easily. I ran all story dungeons at level and did not have any issues. I suck as a player, but still, no issues. Exp paths are a joke. This game has very very little in the way of challenging PvE content. If you can run the first 9 levels of fractals as a level 2, there is a major problem with the challenge of that dungeon. If you cannot run it at 10-19 without ascended, you lack some fundamental skill set of the game. If you have issues with Story mode, your group has much to learn about the fundamentals of combat in this game. If you have problems with explorer mode, you either do not have an organized group (for which they are suposedly designed, although that is out the window at this point), are vastly under-geared for your level, or most of the group lacks the knowledge/skillset the game is trying to teach you.

If every possible aspect of a game is able to be eaisly completed by everyong in a short amount of time, the majority of the gaming population will stop playing the game in a matter of days/weeks/or months. You fail at something, it can be viewed as an opportunity to learn the game and try again or give up. You always succeed at everything, the only option there is to give up. See the problem?

Abraxxus.8971:

really that big of a problem? I just ran my first dungeon since this change was put in, and in my honest opinion, this is a horrible change. So what if downed players could rez and run back in the middle of a fight. At least then they didnt have to wait around, hoping that another group member would be able to rez them (and hope the rezzer wouldnt get defeated while rezzing) and while being downed being completely useless in a fight. At least being able to rez at a wp and running back, you could still be useful to the fight instead of waiting.

Really, this change needs to be reversed.

Yes, it cheapened the entire game and made it so you did not need to think in the least to access all endgame content.

yes, now that we are allowed to reconnect it is possible, although it slows down your party and is against the spirit of the dungeon…bad for group, bad for anet, good for you….you make the call.