Guild Wars 2

Is it actually all swearwords which get replaced by “kitten”? Or just some of them?

RizziVanizzi.1532:

It just gives people who can’t be bothered with guild stuff, an option to find a PUG faster. How’s that bad?

Because, given path of least resistance, you need to force a modicum of socialization, or it will not be constructed by the players.

In other words the developers have a very real hand in shaping (not just providing a framework for) their social online communities.
Because, LFD had exactly that effect in WoW: It removed the need to try to be social. Without it, your server reputation mattered. If people know you’re bad, they won’t take you along. You can build a reputation, both good and bad, for dungeon runs.
Add LFD, and the lion share of dungeoning will happen with the tool, not via custom-built groups. Given the anonymity when the tool sorts the group, social reputation is now a non-issue. You can be a jerk, and when you click to queue the tool will sort you into a group again, just the same.

How is that a “win/win”?

Hrm…
What can I think of, off top of my head? This is female Asura, btw.

• “You’re dumb. You’ll die, and you’ll leave a dumb corpse.” → Initiating combat, I think against humanoids only. Also used very infrequently.
• “Endurance: deficiency” → When trying to dodge while out of Endurance.
• “Structural integrity: compromised” → When nearly dead.
• “Go on, hit me!” → Protection.

Actually the “fully copy” is easiest to program, whenever a Phantasm or Clone does something, use the master’s stats. I.e.: they have no stats of their own at all.

Vibe.2861:

Did you read my post? How is someone doing conditions doing any more damage than direct damage user? It’s the same. You either do damage by conditions or direct damage.
This should not lead to bleed damage nerf.

Assuming it’s really the same total damage, not sure. But generally speaking condition builds should do slightly less damage (due to how easily conditions are removed in most situations), and then it balances out again.

Cameirus.8407:

Like I said I dont really think its a Mesmer issue though, its the problem wiht the really bad contribution system.

Yeah I agree, this is not something I’d like to see fixed on the Mesmer side, because that’d mean the devs then sit down and ignore the actual issue. :P

Problem is that you need to damage mobs to tag them, and only damage is extrapolated to contribution level.
Which is… well…

I should be fine doing nothing but rezzing people dying, assuming I find enough for it. I could have done so at the Claw encounter earlier, np, plenty people were on the floor all the time.
If I want to contribute that way, I should be eligible for credit!

I should be fine spending my time debuffing single high-power Veterans in the large packs. I should not be required to spread abilities out to the small ones, I am already contributing and pushing buttons like mad!

I should grab nearby environmental weapons and using them, even if they are mobile shield projectors like in the Dredge zone!

And that is what needs fixing. We need an activity-based proximity contribution system. You were nearby, you were active, you get credit. Based on what % of time you were active and what % of time you spent close to the encounter.

Embolism.8106:

I think skills are ordered based on their CD, so skills with longer CDs will go towards the back. Chaos Armour and Chaos Storm are an exception because Chaos Storm used to have 40s CD, same as Chaos Armour; and they didn’t change the order when they reduced Storm’s CD.

Yeah this exactly.
It makes it very weird ofc, but there is a fairly real reason for the ordering.

Sardoni.8361:

Mesmers have no one handed direct damage ranged weapon options (say that 10 times fast o.o). As a side note (but something worth pointing out) Mesmers also have no one handed melee condition damage weapon (maybe a dagger… debate for late on that one =P).

Yes but do we need one? That’s the far bigger obstacle.
By the logic of “What can I possibly be missing” I could also add a 1H Axe (Melee Bleed-focused), 2H Rifle (medium-range power-based AE weapon), 1H Pistol (Medium-ranged power-based direct damage weapon) and 2H Hammer (Melee based single target weapon).

All stuff we don’t have yet but maaaaaybe overkill. :P

I’ll admit ofc, DW Pistols would be stylish.
But I can’t see it having a place, I’d much rather see the Scepter buffed and the GS #1 sped up (and #3 made non-rooting) so that my already existent weapons function in their intended situations.
Then I can already cover ~everything, the remaining weapon-selection issues then come down to class-balance issues like PMage being too weak, Prestige being unnecessarily complex to use, such stuff.

Malakree.5912:

To summerize, stop hating on the phantasm build, we get you don’t like it. If you hate it that badly go play a warrior/engineer or accept that your just not going to play it. The problem is not phantasms, the problem is that phantasms are the only properly supported trait build which doesn’t suck.

No that’s completely not the problem.

Ok, to maybe explain my “Phantasm build hate” better, consider the following builds for the following classes:

A Ranger specced so that he gains a lot of bonuses when he has no pet active.
A Warrior specced so he gets lots of +damage and +effects when his rage is at full.
A Necromancer specced so he gets bonuses the longer he stays at max-lifeforce without transforming.
An Elementalist specced so his Fire stance heals, provides debuffs and also defence, as long as he never swaps it.

The point is, all these builds – and our 3-Phantasm build – have one thing in common: They disable the class-bar. Only contrary to the above ones, ours is reality, and in fact it’s so strong that it is quickly becoming the norm among Mesmers.

And that doesn’t strike you as odd?
That a build should exist – and be balanced around – which serves to disable the entire upper-left of your hotbar area? Can you really imagine all classes having that supported? As I said above, we’re talking a Ranger who’s most effective damage build works by not having a pet active. Would that not strike you as completely wrong and while maybe powerful, not good game design?

My problem is not with the power of Phantasms.
My problem is with them clogging up the 3 spots. And how bad they work with Shattering, due to taking so much time to be re-summoned.

Hence the proposed solution:

1. Merge the power of 3 Phantasms into one.
   Probably a bit less than three, but the point is that you can keep the exact same damage / power / offence as with 3 Phantasms today, by only having one out.
2. In turn, disallow use of 2+ Phantasms at a time. Given the above change this would be mighty overpowered, anyhow.
3. Finally, tweak the utility of each Phantasm.
   This will now be required since while the above two changes already emulate the concept of having, say, 3 PDuelists out, they cannot yet emulate 2 Duelists + 1 Defender or anything like that.

Why this? Because with such a change the power of Phantasms and a Phantasm build stays (a fully traited Phantasm Mesmer would still have the same % of extra power with his – now single – Phantasm over a non-Phantasm Mesmer just using the baseline ones), yet at the same time, you can freely shatter whenever a Phantasm CD is up.
Shatter, then re-summon. Timed well you hit the inter-attack delay and you didn’t lose any power, but the Shatter-bar is now “unlocked” for a Phantasm-based setup.

In other words, no, I don’t “hate” the 3-Phantasm build. I hate it’s specific implementation right now. If someone wants to fully trait Phantasms be my guest, but this should not come at the price of the class bar.
Or do you see a fully Marksman specced Ranger running around without his pet because that’s so much superior to using one? :P

khadorian.6417:

Temporal enchanter: DOES NOT WORK, big dissapointment.

There is currently a tooltip bug where the skills show their +trait duration, albeit they don’t last that long. In other words the trait works, the tooltips of the abilities are bugged however.

khadorian.6417:

warden’s feedback : DOES NOT WORK, or iv not found a single focus skill.

Focus skills means the two abilities on the offhand Focus.

khadorian.6417:

malicious sorcery : what exactly is +50 malice? im guessing might.

Malice is the beta-name for Condition Damage. Many abilities still list the stats by their previous, “lore” names. Same with Warrior Banners for example, +Expertise and +Compassion. :P

Malakree.5912:

This damage is actually pretty poor compared to the upfront damage most of the other professions has access to. Plus it’s entirely cooldown based (mirror images is a 40second cd?).

All damage which is not based on #1 is CD-based. :P

tufy.7859:

Oh, I’ve seen you, as I’ve played a shammy too – Nathaira. We meet again

It’s amazing how small the world can be. :P

I don’t think our healing is bugged, is it?
It works as advertised, for all three abilities.

Oh, sec, edit, traits.
Yeah, those are bugged. Phantasmal one is weird, but I also wouldn’t just want a straight buff without first limiting Phantasms to 1 or something, it’d just further – and quite substantially – promote 3-Phantasm gameplay which essentially disables the class-mechanic (and I see the problem with being able to have 3 Phantasms, not with the Shatter mechanic :P ).
Likewise the heal-on-shatter is weird. It doesn’t scale with # shattered, it doesn’t seem to scale at all. Not even with healing power. Probably bugged.

Drudenfusz.2971:

Some people like to shatter their illusions and that is fine, so it would have been nice if that option would have been completly as utility skills and that the class skills would really something every Mesmer player could find useful.

I then see the direct problem more in the traits / abilities even suggesting a non-shatter gameplay.
Shatter is our class mechanic. While it should be possible to make it stronger or leave it slightly weaker (just like a Ranger can spec their pet power or not), it should not be possible to achieve a setup which flat out doesn’t want the class mechanic.

In other words:

1. Limit Phantasms to 1 at a time.
2. Rebalance Phantasms so that they are significantly stronger than they are now, but much less trait-reliant. Shorter attack cycle, better damage, better combo-triggers, more utility, better utility.
3. Make Phantasms have the shatter-effect of 2-3 Clones (whatever works best in practice).

This way you have only one Phantasm. It is worthy of it’s spot, it’s powerful. However come it’s CD – at latest – you want to shatter it away, since you cannot re-use the ability without overwriting the old one, anyhow.

Zeffy.3984:

To be honest, I don’t think this should matter. Every class has a specific color scheme (for the most part) so it’s really not hard to tell what’s what. Someone’s casting shiny purple spells on you? Mesmer. Blue spells? Guardian. When someone’s moving around, I notice their spells a lot faster than I notice their armor.

The problem with that is that spell effects are only a viable give-away in a small-scale, 1v1 ~ 3v3 situation. Anything above that, say, proper 50v50-200++ WvW combat, and you need to go by armour type + weapon + animation. Lacking armour would be a serious blow to that.

sazaw.1347:

it’s funny, My character is necro, ppl complain how nacro skills are trash in nacro thread, then I checked Ele thread and found complaint about how weak Ele in pve, then come to Mesmer thread and found out Mesmer’s whine as well. So I stop going to other profession thread :/

That’s exactly my point, it’s just as with every other MMO, everyone whines how their class is clearly the weakest, and how the devs hate their class specifically. :P

tufy.7859:

Carighan (I wonder, the same Carighan that posted on WoW forums all those years ago? It cannae be)

The Warlock named Carighan?
That’s me, yeah.

The Shaman named Carrigan, also. That’s why you might not have seen me since mid-TBC, mostly been frequently the Shaman and Healer forums instead of the Warlock ones. Switched because Warlock turned further and further away from a support-focused debuffer and towards a “simple” DPSer, and well, Shamans were needed in Ab Aeterno.

tufy.7859:

- while it is true that the classes are supposed to work in unison and that max damage is not always the way to go, do not forget that a lot of the time, a player may run around solo.

No I know, but even for soloing – or maybe even especially there – I’d argue that a max-DPS build is more hurting than beneficial. Yes it looks great, but while WoW has all conditioned us to think the following pattern:

1. Are you a Tank? The more EH you have, the better you are.
2. Are you a Healer? The more you can heal, the better you are.
3. Anything else? The more and bigger the numbers above the enemy head, the better.

I think GW2 doesn’t really work this way. I tried it, it is doable, but while it feels stronger due to the numbers you see, it feels weaker due to how unstable it becomes.
At least in direct comparison, a more balanced setup which trades some offence for a lot of interrupts can handle dungeons, solo and PvP so much better simply because I can genuinely disrupt 50%-75% of the incoming damage and it’ll never hit me. The whole pressure to burn everything down ASAP disappears. Especially in dungeons, but solo-PvE isn’t that much different really. Once you know the animations, locking down enemies and avoiding ~100% of the damage is really easy. Especially since, once an enemy is focused on us, we can play to our Distortion-Strength.

nidwin.6731:

As for dieing as last one in a dungeon. Same here but this doesn’t mean I was actually being efficient there. With the actual status of our bugged healing on mantras and crappy design on our phantasm for the regeneration we already lose an important aspect we could bring to a group in a dungeon. Because we all have to be honnest that you don’t take a mesmer in a dungeon because of the Mesmer’s dps.

You shouldn’t take anyone for their DPS, at least to a dungeon.
The reason we die last is because unlike the other people in the group we worries for a split-second about our self defence. We tend to, since we are so good at it and it’s everywhere on our stuff (just look at Shatters or Blurred Frenzy).

Contrary to that, plenty other players just stand&nuke, expecting to burn down the enemy before it burns them down. They’re the ones who survive fights with 5% HP left or after hitting the floor thrice, and who complain that they again lost 2 gold and 2 hours on a dungeon and kept having to grave-zerg the boss.
Get them to actually play more defensive, and you do entire dungeons where the worst which happens is someone getting downed from jumping down too far at a ledge. It’s amazing how much survivability Interrupts + Dodges + Invulnerabilities provide if everyone uses them and splits the task between them.

While I agree on many points (like Shatter imbalance for different clones, or Phantasms being too strong when active and their Shatters too weak), I think you’re making a mountain out of a molehill.

Nice, long, well-structured post, but each paragraph reads like the sky is falling and all you do when you log in your Mesmer is continuously keel over dead in Lion’s Arch from the pressure your body exerts onto your feet.

Now, Mesmers are quite functional. We have problems, yes. So do basically all other classes. I do not see by what metric my issues are more pressing than theirs, it seems we can all do the job, but we all have issues left to fix and kinks left to smoothe out.

Nice, thank you.

There’s a small error in the #1 description, Vulnerability stacks in intensity, not duration.
In other words you can’t stack it to 25 on your own, as the first stack will expire after 6,5s, independent of the other stacks.

Or they count each number shown by the PDuelist as a separate shot instead of the continuously growing total tally, and then feel all high and mighty about their l33t Duelist damage. :P

Yes it does, and I also firmly believe that the extended durations should be the baseline ones, except maybe on Feedback (which is horrendously powerful as it is :P ).

I agree.

Please do not nerf the difficulty of dungeons or add a casual low-difficulty mode. This is a very cool thing about GW2, that it’s Dungeons are genuinely something you want to be up for, even on Story Mode.

Plus:
Once you stop trying to play your class as a WoW-like pure DPSer, no class dies that often in Dungeons. It’s just issues of people coming in with max Power / Precision builds and pure glass cannon setups, dying in 5 seconds 200 times because they set their char up for that, and then complaining about it.
Rather, make a tutorial popup which tells you that completely non-defensive setups are a risky thing since no external Tank or Healer is there to protect you.

Zish.9817:

I also completely disagree with the OP.

This game needs a Dungeon Finder if dungeons are to be a prominent part of the game.

Why?
Serious question. “Because WoW had one”? That’s hardly an argument, why do you need one?

NinjaEd.3946:

WvWvW should have near free repair costs. Your bound to die alot in it unless your server is just that good. But it discourages other servers from entering wvwvw when they are getting dominated and tossing silver away for repairs because they cant collect anything.

But this also means all money-drops get removed from WvW, and items dropped in WvW can no longer be vendored or salvaged, right?

No expenses => no incomes. Or the economy inflates.

It seems all skills which’s durations get extended via traits display their upgraded duration. Independent of whether you have the trait or not. :S

Yeah, it seems a buff. Oh noes, the devs are listening to our complaints about the stolen 2h Fury, quick, let’s make 15 whine threads! :P

I agree.
But I see this for all classes, “How do I do max DPS?”, “How do I tank the best?”, “What’s our highest damage ranged setup?”.

I call it “wowthink”, to reference 1984.
It is the doublethink of both accepting the non-role nature of GW2, and at the same time accepting or wanting to accept the – inherently conflicting – focus on a single role.

Now mind you, sure, I can make a glass cannon setup on any class. I’d argue that unless your enemies are stupid and ignoring you, you’re being inferior as a damage producer with that compared to a more defensive setup.
GW2 combat tends to be about survival, moving fronts and target-isolation (WvW), full control, zugzwang (sPvP) and redundant defensive maneuvers (PvE). Providing those things for each respective area of gameplay means you won before you engaged in the fight, and your damage becomes virtually meaningless (I mean, beyond what you do anyhow, glasscannon setup or not) simply because your enemy is not in a position to defeat you first.

That being said, you can very well make a GW2 character who viable focuses around dealing more damage than the average, say, Mesmer does. However, this still means you shouldn’t play it like a WoW Elemental Shaman, being a DPSer with nothing else behind it. You do nice damage + let your team down.

In short:
To cause maximum damage (making them lose), you should not aim to cause maximum damage (the number above the enemies’ heads).

Rhyno.7084:

What they should have done is just given him a +20% crit damage buff rather than the boon. Can’t be stolen, can’t be cleansed, can’t interfere with retaliation. Best solution IMO.

Why?
There’s a perfectly normal and readily understandable ingame +20% crit buff already. It’s called Fury, and being a boon everyone understands how it works right away.
Also, why should it not be stealable in the first place?

Not like Norn or Charr have a racial healing skill.

It’s only Humans (I seriously don’t get the point of their racial heal. Does any of the professions not have a superior direct heal? All I tried had one.) and Sylvari (this one arguably has an actual use).

Anyhow, 3/5 races have no racial healing skill.
Actually, make that 2/5. Golem Suit -> Self Repair, we have one. :P

Malakree.5912:

1: It’s really not.

Huh?
The whole point of all the whine-threads about 3Phantasm-builds is that “Waaaa, my third phantasm gets replaced by a clone”, “Noes, my Phantasms die before I have all three up” and “kitten, Fury runs out before I even have the second phantasm out”.

In other words, yes, it is hard. The point of all the whine threads is that the game doesn’t support 3-Phantasm play outside of very ideal situations (no AE, 15s+ prep-time or utility-use for the “inferior” Phantasms), Scepter isn’t possible, Underwater is difficult to pull off.

Exactly my counter-argument to the 3-Phantasm setups in the first place. As high-damage as it may be I prefer being useful over doing max-DPS most of the time (and that means being a mix of a heckler, debuffer and defender as a Mesmer, with weight according to spec/setup), and the game denies you the 3-Phantasm setup left right and centre, anyhow.

It’s almost… you know… as if the devs didn’t intend Phantasms to be stacked up to 3 Duelists / Wardens / Zerkers / Swordsmen. Expect nerf to limit Phantasms to one of each type. Just a hunch, but I am fairly certain this is gameplay they didn’t intend.

Having 0 problems here. Just shatter into enemies to tag for DEs, and for solo farming use a mix of GS + something else. GS is great because it allows you to kill single targets extremely fast with a Mirror Bounce + swap, but also allows you to keep up the AE pressure with PZerker + Wave.

All GS#3 needs is to remove the root-component. The animation length is ok, as is the radius, but the fact you stand still is the problem in PvP.

Need more work? Yes.
More work than the other classes? No.

Everyone has their fair share of balance troubles, gives the devs a minute or two. :P
For now I prefer my AH functional and my guild emblem working over my Scepter having a faster animation.

ShawnBuzu.8045:

Yeah, 10s/hr. By which most of it gets depleted with waypoint travelling, salvage kit buying and mat buying.

I honestly have no idea why you are doing only renown hearts and never killing enemies.

If I go through a zone, say, for one hour, I complete 3-4 renown hearts, 10+ events most likely, that’s ~30s at your level already.

But, I also get items. Items I vendor, everything White+. I end up with ~50-70 silver for the time spent, quite a lot of money at lvl45. And this is after repairs / teleports.

Your proposed solution also wouldn’t change something. You’re not argueing mobs drop too little cash, you’re essentially argueing that you find repairs / teleports / vendor costs too pricey. Because if you just increase drops for every by 100%, AH prices will go up by 100%, too. Actually more than that, but that’s more complex business stuff to get into.

Point is, you seem to be alone with this problem. :P

Really, the economy in GW2 seems intentionally kept tight, but considering you can freely exchange Gold <→ Euros, isn’t this a good thing? Would you really want gold to inflate so much? We need this strong bleed on our money via teleporting, repairing, siege engines, kits, crafting mats and gems, or exactly what you currently bemoan would happen: The economy would be terrible.

Yeah although the question is why it was changed. Given the extremely slow attack cycle of Scepter #1, I doubt you could even get 2 stacks up.

EasymodeX.4062:

I find these to be problematic due to the player stagger that occurs when the clone is summoned on block. Typically, I like to move in a certain direction while blocking. When the block activates, the player is jerked in another direction (seems like to the side) for a second. This is typically what I do NOT want to happen when I am blocking and it makes those abilities very dubious to use in practice and simply jarring in general.

Hrm, not sure how I feel about this. Without that jerk, it’d be absolutely trivial to follow the “real” Mesmer around. With the random mini-movement, it’s not entirely trivial at least. Sometimes people go for the clone with the first attack after getting blocked, simply because they can’t immediately see 0,2s after which is the real one.

Zeohi.2853:

My main issue now is interrupting, you make it sound so easy. How can you tell when an enemy is even casting something? The only thing I can tell are the melee enemies that have a severely telegraphed knockup. Am I not looking close enough? Do most enemies have tells that I can look for to know when to interrupt, or is it dungeon-to-dungeon and the best way to find out is to experience it once and learn from there?

It’s really mostly experience with the model types.
For example Golems have three types of attack animations, one is aligning both arms, one is spinning, and one is extending one arm. As soon as their arms move from the idle stance animation, you can see from whether it’s two down, one up or two up which attack it is, and do the interrupt (animation started means it’s fair game).

With other enemies it’s difficult.
Dredge ranged attacks with their sonic rifles are among the worst, unlike say Inquest, they don’t raise their rifle. What you can see though is how they have this sort-of “abort” in their idle stand, they bob a bit, then the animation jitters for a split second (this is because they went from the idle animation to the attack one), that’s when you can interrupt.

On for example the inquest boss in SE, it’s quite easy since he has to go through the normal Asura animations. Watch his feet, Asura stand different during idle and during attacks when wielding MH/OH.

Yeah I know, doesn’t sound good. But it works out really well. Ok, for me.
GS damage is no problem for me, not there to burn down enemies fast. I use Mirror Blade a lot, plus I dodge a ton (I get Vigor from critting, Clones on dodge, and shatters give everyone nearby more Vigor) to get more clones out.

I actually started using the Signet of Illusions just so I can reset shatters. I shatter a lot. It gives Weakness and Vigor, plus if the clones get killed otherwise they still cause Confusion and Cripple. Plus it gives me ample access to Distortion and Diversion, and interrupting attacks is a large part of what I do in instances.

Sword/Sword is tricky, I’ll admit that. Backflipping out of harm’s way is incredibly important, but often you have very little time to do so. But don’t underestimate your interrupts. Being in melee range means your clones are there, too, means you can always instant-Diversion. And betwee that, Mantra and #4 Sword, I get by most attacks by virtue of the enemy never getting to use them.

For the other times there’s Time Warp and Feedback.

Huh? That should not happen, that is clearly a bug.
What should happen is this:

1. Phantasm summoned.
   Illusion 1 = Phantasm 1.
2. Clone summoned.
   Illusion 1 = Phantasm 1,
   Illusion 2 = Clone 1
3. Clone summoned.
   Illusion 1 = Phantasm 1,
   Illusion 2 = Clone 1,
   Illusion 3 = Clone 2
4. Clone summoned. Oldest non-Phantasm entity is replaced, so available, if not, oldest Phantasm is replaced.
   Illusion 1 = Phantasm 1,
   Illusion 2 = Clone 3,
   Illusion 3 = Clone 2

If it’s killing your phantasm despite Clones being up, report it. That’s exactly the stuff they did away with in late beta, or should have. :S

Well Clones never overwriting Phantasms would mean that at 3 Phantasms, you cannot summon a clone, hence that’d be broken. :P

But realistically, the perma-phantasm problem is big. Our power should not be locked in the Phantasms. I’d move it out of there, which might require heavy nerfs to the Phantasms, which in turn might – or rather will – require adding utility to the non-utility Phantasms since it’d mean they can no longer justify themselves via their power.
But our raw power should not rely on shutting down 2 of our staple mechanics, Clones and Shatters.

Hrm, tricky. I found in general that not trying to be a DPS Monster works best in Dungeons , and this seems to go for any and all class. You’re far better off doing 33% less damage, fighting 50% longer, but being unlikely to die, compared to the time you lose from single members running back and losing them entirely for the duration.

I went with Sword / Sword / GS so far, for two reasons.

1. S/S works well whenever I need to AE or go fully defensive. Blurred Frenzy and Block are great, my attacks sweep through everyone, and as an added bonus my dodge-clones stack more Weakness and dispel more Buffs if there’s little AE going around. The Phantasm is also surprisingly durable since he jumps out constantly, and in 5mans there’s nearly always a combo field he can trigger.
2. Greatsword gives me some group buffs, another interrupt (I already got Diversion, Sword #4 and Mantra) to prevent enemy attacks with, and also once again allows me to strip buffs.

There seems to be a common theme to dungeon survivability:
The more defensive utility, the more buff-removal and the more interrupts your group brings, the cleaner the fights are. Seriously. The golems in SE are anything from completely crazy lethal to annoyingly long-lived but non-lethal depending on just how many interrupts your group communicates via voicecomm (everyone calls when they’re out and you rotate down the group). Everything they do can be interrupted, including all their really dangerous attacks.
And it’s like this for virtually all boss fights.

So from experience so far, defensive play (hence OH Sword, and hence GS and all the additional interrupts) really shines in Dungeons. I couple this with a fair amount of Vitality and Toughness gear, the rest is Power and Healing. Adds some survivability for when the interrupting goes bad. :P

I would say one issue is the wowthink (to reference 1984) of us all. We think “How can I do the most DPS, given these circumstances”. This implies the “role” DPS, and yes, often we say that in GW2 everyone is a DPSer. Yet this is misrepresenting things, as lacking the other roles the role of the DPSer – by lack of comparability and distinction – disintegrates, leaving … well … no real role.
In other words the goal is not to do the most damage, with or without phantasms. The goal is to be the most efficient. And from experience in dungeons so far, glass cannons can work, but aren’t really efficient. They shine when they work, which they fail to on a fairly frequent basis. :P

If you don’t know this joke from the WoW Warlock forums, it won’t make much sense.
Here’s the gist of it, thought:
http://www.wowwiki.com/Kralnor

and talking about class mechanic makes you pathetic because everyone knows that if you need do dmg and choose between using F1 or stay 3 duelists alive…

Phanx, that’s exactly what I said.
Mesmers are advertised as producing illusions to confuse enemies and dissolving them for “powerful effects”. I’m saying, well this needs rebalance, because right now Phantasms are strong, and Shatters too weak. Damage-wise there’s no reason I’d ever MW over leaving the Phantasm up (ofc the utility shatters can have their uses).

From this problem I extrapolate:

1. Buff damage of Shatters. Potentially, add damage to all shatters or add damaging secondary effects (Cry of Frustration could be more than 1 stack of Confusion baseline, could also have Blinding or Fumble added, Diversion could add Confusion stacks in high count since it’s single-target, Distortion could give you multiple stacks Retaliation). In other words, make Shattering far more desireable damage-wise, even before Traits.
2. As a follow-up from above, once buffed, it might be Phantasms need a nerf. I’d prefer a re-make to be single-use F&F Illusions which don’t factor into your shattering at all but also cannot be kept up indefinitely or stacked or anything, but the specifics of how these are resorted would be something else then. If they even need to, it could be that buffing Shatter-damage inherently fixed any worries with Phantasm-stacking because it would now be far from optimal to do so.
3. As a secondary follow-up, traits for both shattering and phantasms might need a re-examination as towards the gap between fully untraited and fully traited.

The point is, I’d fix this problem by fixing the root of it.
Not by masking over the symptoms by supporting the petclass-setup, which in itself is only a result of the class mechanic itself lacking. Hence the Necro comment.

(edit)
Out of context, are you the Phanx? From wowinterface / wowace?

Levetty.1279:

Remove the stupid distance feature on the auto attack or change it so that instead of punishing being close to the target it rewards being far away

While I agree, that’s what the current implementation is doing. You do extra damage if you’re far away.

For what is this?
If you do this for Dungeons, you’ll soon join the ranks of the “zomg dungeons are too hard”-whiners. Dungeons go from ridiculously lethal to fairly relaxed just with dropping glass-cannon setups for more defensive setups with Vit / Tough / Healing and fitting trait selections (don’t even have to respec).

Phanx.4832:

I wanna summon 3 duelistis and then just autoattack and use 3 by cd.

This is already supported in the game, it is called a Necromancer, available on the create character screen.

(Seriously though, you’re essentially argueing that you want to not use the class-mechanic)
Oh and before someone now comments how boohoo, phantasms are so superior, then yes, you are nailing the problem there. They should not be superior to shattering, as shattering our clones and phantasms is our class mechanic. Needs fixing. But not of the “I wanna play a Necro-Mesmer”-type, rather actual re-balancing of the skills so our total power is fine despite using our class mechanic.

This would be so much better if your name was Kralnor. Heh.

Has anyone tried whether the Suit can actually be used by someone else, like the tooltip seems to indicate?

Trimethicon.7405:

I’ve been gaming since the early 90’s, I’ve played over 20 MMOs. The dungeons in GW2 are too hard for such little reward. Everyone I know has basically stopped playing that for that very reason.

Are there any plans to revamp, or take a look at the dungeons?

I would argue some (AC, the golem-boss in SE) are too hard, but they are very rewarding.

Not rewarding in the “ZOMG, full set of epix, shinies, awesome, loregasm”-sense, but rewarding in the “kitten YEAH, we did it!”-sense. They pull that off extremely well.

Nadril.7510:

1. Signet of Illusions (It doesn’t seem to work well with its self. You get increased Phantasm health [Ok, I guess] but then can refresh CD on an ability that destroys all of your phantasms?

Keep in mind this actually synergizes perfectly – or would, if it weren’t bugged.

Clones and Phantasms get +50% health, and you can reset shatter CD. The +50% health makes sure your C/Ps actually arrive at their target when you press Shatter. Ultimately the signet is all about boosting your shatter output, quite a bit.

The problem is the bug. The +health is applied with a delay, often your Cs especially are dead by the time the +health would come into effect.

MoPain can probably be fixed if it is made AE, no?