Guild Wars 2

MRA.4758:

I somewhat doubted that there are really 1500 events in the game when I was asking this question some months ago. Now, with release of the public event API, I have been proven wrong: According to this API call there are currently 1636 events in the game. So ANet has been true to their announcement. Kudos for that.

~MRA

The real problem is how events are triggered. I believe the roadblock event for the bridge just outside of Divinity’s Reach requires a certain number of people to pass through for it to activate. Others are on timers like the bandits raiding a ranch. What bothers me is that very few seem triggered by players.

Aberrant.6749:

Here is the thing about vuln on staff… yes it sucks if you’re full cond and solo. However the vuln has good group applications (support). It also isn’t worthless if the staff is used as a as a power weapon (iwarlock hits like a truck if you’re power built).

While this is true, I would rather see poison then vulnerability. It doesn’t stack high enough and there aren’t many traits to boost it so it’s really only effective against champions. Poison, on the other hand, would synergize well with a condition build and a power build.

I would like to see the personality system not only affect story options but how characters speak battle quotes. There should be a huge difference between how a male human warrior says, “For great justice!” with dignity than with ferocity.

I would like there to be a “replay” feature so you can see the cutscenes over again.

I want a mount but there’s a reason I haven’t bought the broom. I don’t want it to be purely cosmetic. I main a mesmer and a mount that provided a speed boost would do a lot for alleviating my reliance on using a focus. Plus way too many of you are limited in your thinking. A mount doesn’t have to be a physical object or vehicle. It could a skill that allows players to hover over the land or a new running animation. Even the new drill counts as a mount and is far more inventive than a lot of other mmos.

I think legendary dyes, ones with have particle effects and light sources, would be better than legendary armor. Probably easier to implement too.

I would like to see earning a precursor be a sidequest to the personal story.

+1 for I would have decked out my mesmer in a full ensemble of Durmund Priory weaponry if I could simply change that drab teal coloring to a more scrumptious fuchsia or mesmer magenta.

There’s a reason my girlfriend calls me Rarity…

You could be like me and absolutely refuse to buy anything with a “chance” at giving a rare skin. If they just listed the skins in the gem store instead, they’d have a lot more of my money.

The way I see it, City of Heroes had the best boss CC system. It was possible but you had to stack them from 2 different characters to make them effective and their durations were always shorter. This gave players the option of focused lockdowns a boss while still making them challenging.

Blaine Tog.8304:

I pulled the trigger on buying a set of Centaur runes and haven’t looked back. It would be a huge usability boost for us to get PermaSwiftness more naturally but you can get around it by wasting your Rune slots.

That’s not an option for me as my runes are the only thing giving me defensive stats. I’m hard-pressed to change accessories because I’m using ascended gear and I don’t want to change my armor or weapons because I have a limited amount of fine transmutation crystals left.

Ralathar.7236:

So we have established 4 things firmly:

1. Sweeping is the only reliable counter to portaling in towers/keeps, period. Scouts help, but only give you a chance of responding in time depending on how well the enemy tapped WP’s and gathered intel on your main force’s location.

2. Sweeping is unfun for most people, being a hiding mesmer can be extremely unfun as well. Someone mentioned hiding for as long as 30 minutes. I’ve had guildies hide for as long as 4 hours.

3. Even if you kill a mesmer a perma-stealth thief can rez them. The devs themselves said you will not kill a good perma-stealth thief, to just move on. Therefore unless the thief is bad you have to camp the dead body.

4. Even if all hiders in the keep are killed they can still easily win the tactical exchange by tying up more people than it is worth.

I’ve thought of one counter but it has the potential of being just as boring. After a quick sweep, have a small, perma-stealth party stay behind while having everyone else make a show of leaving the keep. With luck, it’ll give any stragglers a false sense of security and you can use that brief moment to mow them down. The worst case scenarios are either both parties stay in stealth or there are no stragglers left and the defenders just wasted their time.

It’s really just out-of-combat mobility that sucks. While in combat, I’m hard pressed to think of a class that outshines the mesmer. Perhaps that’s the trade-off.

But don’t get me wrong. I would still like some sort of speed-granting utility so I don’t feel tied to the focus.

As you are new, I wouldn’t suggest berzerker armor to you. You have to be very good at dodging and active defense before you use berzerker armor or you’ll just be shooting yourself in the foot.

Everyone will have trouble chasing down opponents without swiftness. Osicat has an inventive solution though. I believe it works by targeting the fleeing enemy, turning your back to them and using Phase Retreat (Staff #2) then turning around and using Blink to close the gap even more. I’ve never used it but the logic behind it is sound.

By the way, Temporal Curtain works both ways. You can place it in front of an enemy to cripple them when they run over it then use it again to pull them towards you.

theCOREYCOLAK.5698:

Personally, I’m going to have to disagree with you all here. GS is by far a greater support weapon in WvW than staff (range, cripples, CC, boon removal, where as staff is more self preservation). However, in PvE, staff is where all the support is at.

In my opinion, conditions are control, not support. I consider support to be healing, damage mitigation, boon application and boon removal. I know the greatsword has Mindstab but I didn’t include it because it’s weak at both damage and boon removal. On top of that, it has a very small reticule that has to be aimed and a rooting animation that, while visually impressive, does more harm than good. If it prevented new boons for at least 5 seconds, removed 2 or had a blast finisher, it would be one of my favorite attacks.

The greatsword just isn’t made for support. The best use I can think of is using Illusionsary Wave to stop a stomp. I will admit that it is awesome in that regard.

Sounds to me like your problem isn’t really with portals but with sweeping. If you don’t like it, don’t do it. I’m not saying this to sound arrogant. I’m asking you to think about what you are doing. You play games for fun, right? If something you’re doing in the game is taking away from your fun, why do you keep doing it?

I say leave the sweeping to those whom don’t mind or organize a zerg that’s more about capturing points than keeping them. Basically do what’s fun, not what you feel is needed.

Also, the things you mentioned about memsers just tells me we are doing what we are designed to do: confuse and disrupt. We are meant to keep you on your toes.

But if you really want to know how to be better at sweeping, then find all the common hiding spots and use AoEs on them. Stealth doesn’t stop enemies from getting hit and humans are creatures of habit. Even when a good spot becomes compromised, there are fools whom will use it again just because they think it’s still a good spot.

Velimere.7685:

Esplen.3940:

That is if they ruin the economy. An action like this will not ruin the economy (nor did using Runes of the Noble to spawn an ungodly amount of Drakehounds).

Incorrect. My friend was banned for botting when he’s never botted a day in his life (he just so happened to be near bots often during his node runs in Malchor’s Leap). He appealed it all the way up the chain to no avail. It took six months for ArenaNet to say “sorry we ****ed up” and unban his account (which is really just a slap in the face because I bought him a new account that he’s put way more work into than into his original account; make that a double slap in the face since his original Guild Wars account is tied to said first Guild Wars 2 account).

The moral of the story is: If ArenaNet can use it as a reason to ban you, steer the kitten clear of it because they will.

If I was your friend, I would demand compensation. A nice 200% magic find and gold increase for every day the account was banned would work.

I generally have no problem with this. Any time I’m facing more than one opponent, my clones keep the heat off of me while I focus on the target. I’ve done this while soloing the champion effigy that spawns in the event that unlocks the Citadel of Flame and I’m able to hold all the adds on my own too. In fact, my biggest worry is falling off the edge because I can’t get back fast enough to stop the event from failing.

Embolism.8106:

No, any +% damage has no effect on condition damage.

Empowered Illusions is a relic from Beta, when Clones actually did pretty good direct damage. Back when we actually had Clone Power builds… now it’s pretty much a second copy of Phantasmal Strength.

He’s right and I mixed up terms. I meant to say Empowered Illusions is for phantasms. While it does work on clones, their damage is so low, it won’t matter.

You know what would be nice? If the devs put up a webpage that showed how all the sigil cooldowns interacted with each other instead of the players having to do all this ridiculous testing to find out. I can understand them hiding jumping puzzles for the allure and excitement of discovery but this is a convoluted mess that gets in the way of optimization.

Just to entertain your notion, how would you balance phantasms for a group setting?

zaxon.6819:

hmm. the last thing i heard was .. ITS A FLOATER ISSUE ,,,,,,,,,,,PHANTASM IS FINE>>>

ILL GET YOU A SPREADSHEET TOMORROW>> or some bs like that.

“wait it out” the issue is this is not wow. this game can crumble from lack of players. they are still riding the game of the year for all its worth and its not worth that much at this point.

pve fixes and nerfs seem to be thier priority. and gimic new content for pve.

im not here to pve and i know alot of other people could give a crap less about pve content also. time is ticking on getting thier act together as thier playerbase dwindles.

at some point people are going to realize it isnt that cool to be T1 in pvp when that pvp is based on garbage mechanics and bugg fighting.

You have a few things wrong. As for population, WoW is losing players and that will affect it because it is subscription based. Guild Wars 2 is presently gaining players (as evident by servers being more populated than they were months ago) and its buy-to-play model means it isn’t reliant on player numbers. I’m fairly certain the situation is like many free-to-play games where a handful of players with way too much disposable income are actually fitting the bill while everyone else is just here for the ride.

I met one guy that bragged about spending $800 on this game. That just makes my head hurt.

Another thing you have wrong is pve dominates the game at the moment. Many of the latest updates are tailored towards getting more people interested in pvp and wvw because the player interest in them has waned considerably. I remember a time where we had to wait between 30 minutes to 4 hours to get into wvw. Now I have yet to see a query.

I can’t speak for pvp specifically because I don’t care about it. But I’m not going to mention anymore more on this matter because defending the devs this much is making me feel dirty.

Wonderer.1790:

I don’t understand why you would be against this. Phantasm Mesmer should obviously be nerfed in 1v1 capability but buffed for group play. Why would anyone even debate otherwise? The same people crying at the ones who are saying “nerf phantasm Mesmer whilst increasing viability in group play” can only be abusing the build in 1v1’s or roaming/duels in the first place. Otherwise why would you even care if they nerfed phantasm for 1v1’s when they themselves are saying the game isn’t built around 1v1’s.

Honestly don’t care though kittenter is still the better spec. Its the last survivable burst build in the game in my opinion.

One reason is because the devs don’t understand moderation. Nerfing is done with a chainsaw on a stick and way too many times the result doesn’t even accomplish what they intended. To add insult to injury, their track record with phantasms is so bad that we would rather see bug fixes than any improvements.

Another reason is because the mesmer is a duelist class. We excel at 1v1 confrontations, even against champion and legendary mobs. More aoe skills would be nice but I would rather see that implemented in new weapons than tinkering with what we have. That way, if they succeed, we have more functionality. If they screw up, we still have something to fall back on.

As you can tell from this, my faith in their abilities is severely lacking.

I suggest rampager gear as it has power, precision and condition damage. If you need more defensive stats, try rabid gear. Superior Sigil of Earth has a 60% chance to inflict bleed on crit with a 2 second internal cooldown. I can’t think of a better sigil. Superior Runes of the Undead are cost effective, give a lot of condition damage and a bit of toughness.

For traits, Chaotic Dampening is a given for staff cooldown reduction. Deceptive Evasion spawns a clone on dodge and that is extremely powerful for this build. Illusionists Celerity, which reduces the cooldown for illusion powers, is good too. Sharper Images will make your clones inflict bleed when they crit and that pairs well with Empowered Illusions which gives them 15% more damage. Crippling Dissipation inflicts cripple on illusion kill which is very good for kiting. Anything else you get is icing on the cake but I would suggest traits that either cause conditions on illusion kill or strengthens illusions.

The basic playstyle is to spawn clones, stay just out of melee range and kite like hell. If you know an enemy is just about to hit you, use Phase Retreat to make them hit your clone instead. If they kill it, they will be crippled and that will make kiting easier. Place Chaos Storm on you and your enemy so you get the boons while they get the conditions. Don’t forget to phase retreat out of it for free chaos armor. Be sure not to let your chaos armor skill overlap too much with the combo finisher one and try to save it for when you know you’re going to get hit. Get into the habit of shattering with the enemy is low enough. This will save you some time.

I’ve noticed a 1 second delay on blurred frenzy too. It usually happens right after I’ve used another skill. I don’t consider it a big deal as I’m almost always able to get the attack/evade off when I need it. Of course, it could be that I’m so use to it, I subconsciously take it into account.

Noince.7364:

True, but that lies on the fault of human error which can happen in any direction in any matter. Not doing anything and letting all the GS users suffer is equally unfair. I agree there should be a limit to Band-Aids but I believe simple damage adjustments are reasonable.

But in my opinion, adjusting damage numbers alone should be faster than the issue of izerker that occurred since LOS changes which involves interaction between terrain/target/spinning aoe/speed etc.

It’s a “ kitten if you do, kitten if you don’t,” situation. Another bad reason to apply a band-aid is, once you do it for one situation, everyone will want one for any bug that’s not in their favor. Keep in mind that these band-aids would have to be balanced too, which is more time away from the real bugs.

As much as it sucks, just wait it out. They will fix it because even letting it go on this long only garners bad blood from the player base. They know this.

Meridian, I’m going to give you the same advice I give everyone else whom thinks mesmers are overpowered; play a mesmer. No, seriously. Level a mesmer from 1 to 80 then play the build that’s giving you problems. Learn how it works and then learn its weaknesses. Then, the next time you face a mesmer with said build, embarrass them!

On the other hand, if you’re going to post on the mesmer forums, do so looking for help on how to beat a specific build or to inquire how specific mechanics work. As crazy as it sounds, we will gladly assist you and reveal our weaknesses because we want more competent opponents. I can’t speak for the others but I gain no pleasure from easy curb-stomping. I’d rather lose a hard fight than win an easy one.

But if you take nothing else from what I say, then understand this. Do not come to our forums and insist we need to be nerfed while spouting what little ignorance you know of our class. Among us are experts of our profession, some of which spend way too time staring at spreadsheet data and have proven to know more about the game mechanics than the devs do. You will not be taken seriously unless you know what you’re talking about AND you give an rational, well-thought out explanation for why you feel we need a nerf. Anything less than this will be met with hostility and due to a recent nerf which many of us know is unjustified, such hostility will take the form of a lynch mob.

TL;DR, we’re bi-polar at the moment, just like our patron deity. You have been warned.

jportell.2197:

This game is intertwined in extreme ways so any change made, even very small ones, will have a ripple affect. You saw this when they changed the timing between a phantasm’s summon and their first attack months ago. That was suppose to fix one trait specifically with the izerker but it caused hell for all phantasms across the board.

Embolism.8106:

Ether Bolt and Ether Blast already have the same cast time as Crossfire (according to the tooltips at least), it’s Ether Clone’s doubled cast time that makes the whole chain sluggish. Halving Ether Clone’s cast time and making it inflict one stack of 2s Confusion sounds pretty good to me. Reduce direct damage if necessary.

Correction: if they had the same projectile speed. Actually, at this point I say screw it and give us a mainhand pistol.

My problem with the scepter is that the sword far superior. It has a better auto-attack chain, better evasive skill, applies more conditions, has faster skill recharge speeds, does more damage and has a good reason for clones to spawn in melee range. The only advantage the scepter has is range but it can’t compete with the staff or the greatsword in that aspect. The only thing I have ever used it for is confusion stacking which I can only find a handful of good situations to do in pve and the recent nerf in wvw took the fun out of it.

As per my soapbox obligation, I will again state that the devs in charge of balance suck at their job! You do NOT dumb down the game for newbies! You slowly teach them advanced tactics in a safer environment so they don’t stay newbies!

Back to the matter at hand, I want to like the scepter. I have an awesome princess wand skin for it that’s just collecting dust in my storage. I may break it out occasionally for kittens and giggles but, when I do dungeons, fractals or meta-events, I’m going with the sword because it’s just better.

Nuka Cola.8520:

Absolutely ZERO excuses for not finding a bug in what? FIVE MONTHS? lolololol. If they have one person assigned for the job and he looked into it for 1h in the passed 5 months then i can understand why they haven’t fund anything but if there’s people constantly looking into it and not finding anything that’s just lols skills. As i suggested in another thread, DECREASE the speed of izerkers travel time and make it spawn closer to the enemy. These devs seem to not try anything when x class doesn’t become OP because of x skill (this applies to Torch directly).

You know this world is messed up when I have to play devil’s advocate for the devs. If it was just this one bug, you’d have a point. But I take it you’ve played the game recently and have seen at least a handful of all the things that need fixing. Do you seriously think they can clear that big of a cluster kitten in 9 months?

Now if you are referring to their priorities with fixes, I’ll gladly hold them down while you slap some sense into them.

Firefly.5982:

I have never received a single tip before yesterday – I portaled people through the Southsun JP for over an hour and everyone was really thankful and happy, which made me super happy in return XD I didn’t even expect any tips, but then one person tipped me 1g and I was like WOOT O_O It was my first tip and it was a lot, so it was double awesome But I never expect tips. If I do so, I will say so when announcing my portals. I think it’s perfectly fine for mesmers to announce “Portaling for Tips” in mapchat – you ARE spending your time there after all. But if tips are not specifically asked for, I wouldn’t expect any. Some people will tip regardless and that’s great! Some people just send you a thank you in chat and that’s fine as well

If you’re the silver sylvari and that tipper was a lovely, human mesmer in a gothic lolita dress, that would be me! I had accidentally fallen after getting the treasure chest and you saved me the agony of going through the jumping puzzle all over again just to get that last sample. I was so happy you where there, I could have your babies… err… saplings. Seeds? You know what I mean!

jportell.2197:

What makes me think that its not as hard as they are saying it is are the fixes that they issued for the torch right after the same patch that broke izerker. Double blast finisher and perma stealthing on the torch were both fixed with in 2 days… So what’s taking this one so long?

I guess I have to repeat myself. Some bugs are stupidly easy to find. Others are buried under mountains of code. I’ve even run into some where my scripting was flawless but the way the compiler interpreted it in a way I didn’t intend and that borked the entire process. Oh, and I’ve accidentally assigned a string variable type and tried to transfer its value to an integer type. That created a lovely mess as well. And then there’s the nightmare of every coder imaginable. When you’re hired to continue on behind another programmer and they didn’t place a single annotation anywhere in the literally hundreds to thousands of pages of code to tell you what the hell their crap does.

There is a reason why programmers get paid almost as much as doctors. The profession is literally a NIGHTMARE, sometimes requiring 12 to 14 hour days, lots of focus, nerves of steel and the patience to withstand a never-ending cycle of trial and error. I’ve had days where I crashed face first into my bed, too tired to even remove my shoes and only to wake up in a cold sweat two hours later because of disturbing dreams involving terms like “undefined” and “invalid syntax”. It is not for the faint of heart.

If you really want to know how bad programming is, just take a look at the coding for this thread and try your best to understand it.

But if you guys just HAVE to complain about something, the tooltip for the scepter is fair game. That is a simple string constant that should have been fixed after BWE2. Knock yourselves out!

Durzlla.6295:

Omg yes, make the scepter be the “Fast Casting” weapon from GW1 where you just throw spells out at break neck speeds with low CDs, i would love it forever!

I agree with this. I’d consider using it if it had the Ranger shortbow’s attack speed and every third shot did one stack of confusion. The clone can be integrated with the block. One clone if you use the next chain, two if you successfully block with it.

I feel like I need to start a class on how to fight Mesmers. Phantasms aren’t hard to deal with. In fact sometimes I outright ignore them because it’s fairly easy to dodge their one attack every 5 seconds.

I won’t repeat my entire post here. I’ll just say that bugs are a lot harder to fix than you think. There’s a reason why fixing one usually breaks something else.

I’ve read that thread and haven’t seen anything that would suggest why scepter is great. You’ll have to explain your reasoning to me.

This is one time where I won’t give devs flak because, as an amateur programmer, I know the pain of squinting at thousands of lines of coding for 8 hours a day, trying to find where the logic went wrong. Sometimes you get lucky and find a period that’s out of place. Other times you hunker down and painstakingly follow the coding process line by line by line through every single module over and over and over and over again until you finally find out where the logic went wrong. It’s akin to reading every Star Wars novel (and there are over 300) until you find and fix every last inconsistency dealing with Coruscant.

No, I’m not switching sides and I will still insult every stupid decision the devs have made. I’m just giving them a break on this one. The are doing what any good programmer would do; fix what you can and hope you can do more for the next release.

The synergy is there but you have to think like a mesmer. This class is more about subterfuge, mindtricks and chaos than direct damage. If you’re only using the greatswod for damage, you’re doing it wrong. It’s a “keep away” weapon that’s meant to harass at a distance and all of its powers are geared towards that. Skill one is stronger with range, skill 2 applies conditions at range and can buff illusions. Skill 3 debuffs at range (but it needs a serious buff). Skill 4’s biggest advantage is cripple which helps with kiting. Skill 5 is meant to keep enemies at range. I see a lot of synergy in that.

Hmmm… Maybe skill 4 could be another mimic that blocks and grants retaliation-on-hit while hitting the attacker with confusion. I would have considered it too powerful before the nerf but now it seems just about right. As for a phantasm, we already have a defender so how about one that does nothing but mirror the damage it receives back at the attacker. That would be an awesome psych out power! I imagine, any traits for the shield would be in the Chaos line. I’d suggest adding a 20% skill cooldown reduction to shields with the Mirror of Anguish trait. Then it’s practically ready for shipping!

Of course we’re going to get people that say, “Shields don’t fit the Mesmer,” but I can’t imagine a better image of a duelist than one carrying a sword and shield. Being that such a person is an unorthodox mage, I’d say it would fit the Mesmer perfectly.

That’s the heritage armor, which is styled after GW1 mesmers. You certainly can’t go wrong with it.

I already have the Anomaly. The only thing that could make it better is if it gave off light and floated beside my character’s head. The sword isn’t quite what I’m looking for though. If it had the same effects as Ignus Fatuus, I’d be all over it.

Pyroatheist.9031:

While I personally don’t think bows fit the mesmer style at all, my main objection is that our first and only weapon we truly need is a mainhand pistol, to fulfill the role of mainhand ranged power (along with a rework to give scepter the true role of mainhand ranged condition). Any other weapons merely confuse this need.

I do agree that we need mainhand pistols and the scepter is now the red-headed stepchild because of the latest nerf. But dude, forget greatswords! Pistols don’t fit Mesmers either. There are only a handful of mages that I can think of that use guns and most of them are from anime and manga. Yet we have them. If so many are willing to embrace an out-of-place weapon type for a magic user, why are bows shunned so hard?

To those that want to know, I use a sub-optimal build with rampager gear, staff and sword/focus. I have 5 runes of the soldier and 1 rune of the Ice to give increased survivability. My traits are 20/30/20/0/0 with Crippling Dissipation, Empowered Illusions, Blade Training, Far Reaching Manipulations, Deceptive Evasion, Master of Manipulation and Chaotic Dampening. My utilities are Ether Feast, Blink, Feedback, Nullfield and Timewarp.

Basically my build is everywhere because I like to do a little of everything. A mixture of power, precision and condition damage means, no matter what, I am going to do damage. I’ve also traited my illusions to do good damage while they are alive and screw with anyone that decides to kill them. I have sigils of earth to add more bleeding and sigils of nullification for boon hate.

If I were to name this build I’d call it the “Swiss Army Knife” as it’s designed with a small tool to handle every situation except for support.

Cedric, I see it as a matter of opinion. If you’re looking to be “Wolverine” cool then warriors and thieves are that way, bub. If you’re looking to be “Gambit” cool, welcome to da fold, mon ami!

I’ve got nothing against the idea but I do wonder why you need to know if you have phantasms out. If it’s a specific type of phantasm that you’re looking for, your idea won’t give you that type.

I am ashamed of every single one of you that thinks bows can’t fit the mesmer MO just because we’re a mage class. And Pyro, you of ALL people, should know better! With all the builds you have created and perfected, I would have thought you’d understand that we revel in being completely unorthodox.

Shortbows would make awesome 2hand melee weapons. As I’ve stated time and time again, think Klingon battleth with the occasional arrow shot. We could also go the Quincy route with shotgun like auto attack similar to how guardians use a staff.

However, it’s pretty much a given that we are getting a mainhand pistol first. It’s the most requested weapon and would be a lot easier to implement, given that no trait work would need to be done.

I’ve forsaken both as I don’t use greatswords often and i absolutely hate all the electricity sounds coming from bolt. Bifrost seems more suited to elementalists than a mesmers so I’m saving all my legendary crafting materials and waiting for the next wave. Hopefully something will impress me.