Save your scrolls and do the skillpoints. They give decent experience and there’s no point in spending “money” when you can get the same thing for free.
Black, sometimes I wonder if we’re playing the same game. I don’t seem to have half the problems you do and I consider myself to be average at best at WvW. Here’s how my breakdown goes.
Null Field: Yes, it is static. That makes it perfect for chokepoints and sieges. At chokepoints, the enemy zerg has to either run through it and lose their buffs (even two helps immensely) or stand behind it so it zones. It’s even better when sieging because they have to stand at walls to attack so if you position yourself at the edge of their range, they have to stand in it the whole duration just to hit you. Also, if you’re in a zerg too, I would hope you’d have atleast one other mesmer to work with. If not, anyone with a skill that makes walls will help greatly.
Arcane Thievery: I have to agree that it is buggy, but in smaller confrontations, it can be a gamechanger. I also don’t subscribe to the “stuck with these utilities” mentality. Even I’m hard-pressed to give up Blink but I have survived on my other characters without it. I can also make that adjustment on my mesmer.
Phantasmal Disenchanter: Where did you get only 2 bounces from? Perhaps it works differently in wvw as I’ve only used it in pve but when I did, it bounced 2 times untraited, 3 times with Elasticity. That’s 3 and 4 enemies hit, respectively. It also has a tendency to spawn behind the targeted enemy, attacks almost as fast as clones do and has a 20-second cooldown, untraited. In my opinion, it’s highly underrated.
Mind Stab: I’m sure you meant Mind Spike in your argument against this skill. Mind Stab is the AoE from greatsword. While laskluster for damage, it does a great job at removing boons and pops too fast to be dodged. On its own, it’s “meh” and needs buffs but in a boon-ripping build it’s the go-to power when you absolutely, positively have to strip a boon NOW. Also, from using it on Veteran Karka, I find that it prefers to strip retaliation over stability and regeneration. I need to do more testing to be certain I’m not one a lucky streak but, so far, it has been sniping retaliation first 100%.
Mind Spike: I don’t know how you do it but I’ve always been able to get the third hit off, even when I go kamikaze against the enemy zerg. Are you trying to go yolo in zerker gear?
Shattered Concentration: Yes, if you stand on the front lines and send in the clones, they will die easily. They are easy targets afterall. However, if you do suicide runs into the middle of an enemy zerg, you can pop a few and go boom before they realize you’re there. First, they don’t expect anyone to do something so crazy. Second, zerg mentality has much of the group focused on what’s in front of them so you may be shocked how easy it is to approach solo from the side. Third, yes it pretty much is a deathwish but, those that focus on you aren’t fighting your zerg. Becoming a martyr may be just enough to push the battle in your favor, especially if you’re not alone in doing so. If nothing else, it a LOT more exciting than being a veilbot!
The only thing I’ve come close to concluding is that you seem to be taking others’ word on how things work instead of trying it for yourself or perhaps you think powers still work like they did over a year ago. If such is the case, neither situation is helping you become a better player. My one piece of advice for you is something I’m still learning; always try things out for yourself. Sometimes you’ll be surprised at what you’ll find. For instance, I have an alt mesmer with a heal build that’s so strong, she laughs at the Elite Risen Noble near the Gallow’s Hang skillpoint. At times she gains over 1,000 hp for every tick of the Ether Signet while having over 43 seconds of Regeneration.
Also, I still stand by my initial point. While I feel the devs in charge of balancing need to be fired, I do agree with a part of the change made to Blurred Frenzy. In its original state, it only had weaknesses, not counter measures. That meant a mesmer could use it mindlessly and the person playing against them had no way of stopping them. Now you have to check your target before using it, which requires insight into what your opponents can do, having a pre-planned countermeasure and reflexes fast enough to put such a plans into motion. All of those things add depth to the game. Why would you want to take that away?
And if all you did for Glamour was drop a few fields and kite, I feel for you. There’s so much more you could be doing at the same time to make your opponents miserable.
On some servers and with a good commander, you can zerg around the edge of the mists. Events give lots of experience quickly and you’ll definitely hit a lot of events. When you get high enough, you can do dungeons. All Acalonian Catacombs paths, including the story, is often spedrun daily. Just be sure to join a party that doesn’t mind having a low level player. Though crafting has been nerfed, it’s also a good way to level. Jewelcrafting and Cooking as the cheapest disciplines and will each get you 7 levels when taken from 0 to 400.
On a personal note, I would suggest you take your time and do all the skillpoints while leveling. Not only do these unlock some of the traits now but you’ll need those points to buy utilities. I find it best to purchase all of them on your main because you’ll never know when you’ll need the ones that you swear you’ll never use.
Also “when hit” rune effects are terrible. Too much gameplay is passively done with no thought, and many of those effects are have terrible duration settings (perma might, but ~22% uptime on regen from dwayna as if regen is that strong).
I have a Cleric mesmer that uses Runes of Dwayna with Phantasmal Healing and Signet of the Ether. Since I’ve set that up, I’ve only used the active part of signet to recharge skills. I’ve never needed it to heal. This is even against the Champion Risen Baron in front of the Gallow’s Hang skill point. It took me forever to beat her but she just couldn’t outdamage my passives.
Under the right circumstances, regeneration is insane.
Actually, I can get perma-swiftness on my guardian with Retreat, Symbol of Swiftness and about 35% boon duration. It helps that I can also use shouts to turn conditions into boons.
Actually, it’s not so much about Logan as how people see him. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t like him as a character because he’s too wholesome, straight-laced and illogically smitten. However, I can’t see why everyone goes along with the idea that he, “ran away” during the Kralkatorrik fight.
I understand Rytlock claiming Logan did because he was hurt by Logan leaving but Logan left a well-prepped situation that was becoming dangerous to go to a situation that was already dangerous that no one expected. How is that running away?
I agree that it’s just a matter of focus. I think the skritt don’t use magic only because they’re not interested in it. That’s a good thing for the rest of us. The way I see it, their reckless inquisitiveness and unique communication skills means they wouldn’t be afraid to try things and could spread their findings faster than we spread gossip. An entire colony could theoretically become masters of every discipline literally overnight, if they don’t blow half the planet up in the process.
Blackdevil is talking about big group fights, against which not a single thing you mentioned is a reliable source of “Retaliation removal”.
I’m confused. last time I checked, Retaliation is a boon. I just gave you 7 ways to strip boons, one of which can be traited and used 4 times within the 2 seconds WHILE you are dodge-rolling. If that’s not reliable enough for you, being invulnerable for 2.5 seconds isn’t going to help.
If you want nerfs undone so you’ll be more useful in zergs, it should be the Glamour build ones. They allowed a coordinated handful of mesmers to take out an entire zerg.
I’m not one to toss around hostility as that only turns a debate into an argument. However, between Null Field, Arcane Thievery, Phantasmal Disenchanter, Mind Stab, Mind Spike and Shattered Concentration, you can’t find a way to keep boons off of an opponent? Crazy as it would be, all of those skills, traits and utilities can be taken in one build. I don’t know of any class that can reapply Retaliation fast enough to outpace that. If you want to completely overkill the point, the Sigil of Nullification can be added too.
If you want a class that’s good at fighting zergs then you are in the wrong place. I also hate the fact that mesmers suck against groups but Anet did advertise it as a duelist profession. In that aspect, we got exactly what was on the tin. I can only hope that eventually we’ll get a weapon that will allow us to tag, bag and grab more proficiently.
Here’s a simple solution. The best way to boon strip a zerg is Null Field. Just one mesmer will strip up to 5 boons from 5 different people or 1 boon from 25 different people. Feel free to blink in and slash to your heart’s content after that.
I wonder if people realize that Might increases condition damage too.
BF is one skill – plenty of other skills that can cause you to eat retal damage.
Multi-hit attacks are where retaliation truly shines. If you nerf it here, warriors will want it nerfed for 100-blades and thieves for Unload. Again, Retaliation would lose its meaning as a countermeasure.
I’d prefer change evade to invuln on hitting an enemy with one hit of blurred frenzy – that should negate retaliation completely.
And that would just cause retaliation to become worthless.
I have mixed feelings as well. I haven’t been a fan of Pyro as of late as he was clearly becoming more hostile by the day. This was the inevitable conclusion to that process. However, I also feel that much of his ferocity was warranted. Killing the glamour build… Neutering confusion until it’s nearly worthless… The constant nerfs to Portal… No compensation for the nerf to Timewarp when other classes got some… Buffing Moa morph to the point that it’s safer NOT to use it…
What’s really sad about all this is Pyro was one of the most passionate people for this game. He tried so many other correct ways to bring such problems to the devs attention and was ignored almost all the time. If he did get a response, it was the usual “we’re looking into it” and not a word was heard of since. If pestering a dev to the point of getting banned is the only effective way of being heard, it makes you wonder if they devs are really listening, regardless of how much they say they are.
The reason for the change was because Blurred Frenzy had no countermeasures beforehand. When in use, a mesmer was invincible as even environmental hazards did nothing to them and that is bad game design. The nerf was necessary to keep gameplay fair for those fighting against a mesmer and to promote tactical thought behind its use. I’m not one to say “learn2play” but you’re suppose to check for retaliation before using it and I’m hard-pressed to think of any class that can strip boons better than a mesmer can.
The one thing I do agree on is that also nerfing to its cooldown was unnecessary. Just one of the two changes would have been more than enough to keep it inline and I prefer the first as it requires more conscious thought on the players’ behalf.
That’s actually a boy and there’s 3 of them in the game; one in pve, one in wvw and one in pvp. They’ve been Easter eggs every since the game was released.
You guys missed the point. The bosses are designed to work against zergs. My guess is that they scale to the point that it’s impossible for a zerg to pop them one at a time and still make the limit for gold. Instead, you have to break up and attack each one individually and co-ordinate taking them down at nearly the same time so no other team is overwhelmed. That much was obvious to me the moment I read about them. I’m amazed at how many of you guys missed something so simple.
However, I do agree with you guys on one point though. It’s not worth it. As far as I can tell, the average gold level reward is one rare, a masterwork and 4 champion bags. Their idea of “fun” is for us to put up capital to get the event started and then organize at least 6 teams against new boss mechanics while killing trash mobs that don’t give experience, karma, tokens or any other form of loot just for that pitiful excuse of a reward. Why should we do all of that when we can earn more zerging a SINGLE event in Orr for a lot less effort?
For the first part, find an Ele with a staff in fire attunement is the best consistantly high dps. Even in full soldier gear, autos do more damage as Charzookas and, because the icewall (and possibly the dragon champion itswlf) is considered a structure, damaging ticking aoes are truly devastating! It’s been a while since I’ve done it so I’ll try it again tonight to see if it still holds true.
So you’re saying as a Mesmer you dont want 1200 blink standard?
Right on brother.
He’s saying, for the sake of balance, it’s best to leave it as it is. I agree with him. It’s good, sometimes great, as it is. More focus should be placed on getting other skills up to par with Blink.
34 here and I plan on playing videogames for as long as I can form coherent thoughts. Funny enough, I’m already shaking my proverbial cane at “whippersnappers” whom call Guild Wars 2 a grind.
Forgal was good but I feel Tybalt was far better. I recently replayed the part of the personal story with him in it and I still find it baffling how his part can be so good while just about everything after it was horrible. Better still, where all other charr go on bravadic rants about the glory of war and death, Tybalt was lighthearted and energetic yet still remained focused on the task at hand. His personality also felt realistic. One of the biggest problems for the personal story is how many characters where dynamically descriptive of the situation and the weight of the consequences, should somethign go wrong. Basically they talked as if they were narrating a Broadway play. Tybalt, on the other hand, spoke naturally, like one would if they were speaking to their drinking buddy.
I keep seeing people relate mounts to being like WoW when WoW wasn’t even the first mmo to have mounts. Or the second… Or the third…
Personally I want mounts because sometimes I just want to see the scenery and it would feel more natural to explore while riding something. Actually, it doesn’t even have to be a mount in the technical sense. It could be a skill that lets me hover slightly above the ground or a new sprinting animation.
And no, the ones in the gem shop don’t count because they do nothing for movement speed. If they did 33%, I would have bought one. And no, runes don’t count either. I shouldn’t have to sacrifice an important part of my build just to move faster. I’m glad that it’s there as an option but it’s an impractical option.
Personally, I don’t see why it’s taking so long to rebuild LA. We have a profession that constantly shouts, “I can move mountains,” another that can make clones of themselves, a char Legion that specializes in engineering and an entire Asuran race that has nothing better to do than invent things while ridiculing everyone else’s inventions. And that’s just what I can think of off the top of my head! All the council has to do is grease some palms while challenging a few egos and LA would be back to spec in less than a month!
The only thing swtor has over gw2 is story. Gw2 should match or exceed bioware in storyline and presentation. Living story is the perfect format for that, because it continually evolves, unlike swtor, which is over at the end of leveling.
That’s highly unlikely because of how Bioware operates. They hire writers first and only after testing them extensively. Everything else comes second, which is why they have some of the best stories in the business. I’m not saying Anet can’t reach that level of performance but it is foolish to expect them to unless they change their policies and focus. Also, I feel the living story isn’t very good because too many background stories are left out of the game, interesting side stories (like the hostility between Logan and Anise) aren’t expanded upon and, in the living world’s wake, there’s barely any permanent content. In almost 2 years we’ve only gotten Southsun, Fractals of the Mist and Edge of the Mist. Other MMOs have expanded by 50% or more by now.
Anything that gets into melee range with a mesmer should either get a face full of Illusionary Wave or the business end of a main-hand sword. While it is our only melee weapon, it is also one hell of a melee weapon!
It’s not “Anet hates us” or even a bug. This is what a glitch literally is. Basically the system is working properly but, in unique situations, producing effects that were not anticipated.
I’ll be honest with you guys. If an ele manages to have those skills and can time it is so they turn my clone into a tornado, I would bow to their greatness and ingenuity. I can only hope to meet more opponents willing to give me such a grand challenge.
If they changed it so that it was 250 and it stayed with you until you were downed, I’d consider the trait for a support build. As it is, there’s just no use for it.
Fair warning. Mesmers have always been hard to level but, with the recent changes, the leveling curve is twice as steep. You’ll have to crawl through hell to get to heaven.
To me, the answer is obvious: control and disruption. We should be the best at stripping boons, breaking zergs and interfering with skill rotations. We should have major access to blind, confusion, cripple, chill, weakness and vulnerability; basically any condition that doesn’t cause direct damage; in most of our skills and utilities. On the opposing side, we should have multiple ways of applying quickness, countering attacks and giving our allies distortion. We should also have the 2nd widest range of builds available with the king being elementalists as they are advertised as a “jack of all trades”.
This class should be difficult to learn but those whom master it are seen as gods. Whenever an opponent sees us, they should cringe, not because of damage potential but because they know there is no way to properly prepare to face a mesmer. The only people that should best us are the ones that understand how mesmer powers work and are faster at adapting than we are.
TL:DR; Major in control, minor in damage and the ability to consistently kitten off our opponents.
You think mesmers should rely on their party members to keep up with their party members? To me, that sounds as stupid as saying Sony needs to rely on Microsoft to stay competitive with Microsoft. The reference to Usain Bolt also makes it obvious that you’re missing the point so, again, I feel like I need to be absolutely clear. I’m not looking to push the mesmer class into being the fastest. I just want us to be able to keep up. I can do that on a guardian with one weapon skill and one utility skill. I can do that on a necromancer with a utility skill. I can do that on an elementalist with only combos. For mesmers, all I reliably have is one weapon skill and even that one skill has situations where it won’t apply swiftness. For a game were so much relies on reflex and mobility, that has to change.
As for your argument about my ideas of distortion animations being too much, I’m not even going to get into how perfect the situation has to be to reach that theoretical 50% evade upkeep. Even when taking it at face value, your detailed analysis still falls short of the perma-evade that you claimed it would turn into. So, again, how is a .5 second and .75 second of additional distortion over-powered?
There’s a lot to boost your out of combat speed. I do see the issue, but I don’t see how it is affecting our class a lot. It has already been stated that mesmer isn’t gonna be super mobile, which in whatever case, is understandable. But even without it being ‘’super mobile’‘, I can still move across the wvw map good enough and escape problem. Mesmer’s problem is that it has no role, out of combat speed or not. I personally think it’s also a personal issue eventhough a lot would agree with you.
Anyway way too off topic.What you requested would come out plain op. At the moment the block is already the strongest effect of the skill. Buffing it even more would only make the active effect, aka counter blade and counterspell, look worse. There’s no buff needed on the counter of scepter, though a balance would be appropriate. At the moment it’s everything or nothing. I prefer more reliable but less-hitting skills over unreliable-hard hitting skills.
As for sword, that would give you lots of distortion with dual sword. Perm evasion anyone?
Perhaps I wasn’t being clear enough. I don’t count runes because that’s always a large part of any build I use. I shouldn’t have to build for speed first and theme second just to keep up with my party and hope I can contribute something when the time comes. That’s bad game design.
As for distortion, I’m talking about ONLY during the animations for counterspell and counterblade. That’s 1/2 and 3/4 of a second, respectively. I don’t see how that is overpowered. Also, if you can chain that together to acquire permanent evasion, I would love to see it.
It can be devastating in a condition or hybrid build too. With decent precision, every hit of the auto attack has a chance to crit and every one of those crits has a chance to proc. With the Superior Sigil of Earth, you almost guaranteed to proc bleed once on every channel. With the Sharper Images trait, your clones and phantasms will proc bleed on EVERY crit. It’s ridiculous on the iBerzerker. With Superior Runes of Strength you can double up on the cooldowns for Mirror Blade and proceed to stack Might with the best of them. After the cast-time nerf to Into the Void, I can no longer effectively use it as an interrupt, even in pve, because it’s just too slow. Illusionary Wave, on the other had, is on time every time. Just pushing one person off a cliff is empowering enough. If you manage to catch five, you’ll feel so good, you might need a cigarette!
Above all else, I just love the way mesmers use greatswords. If telekinetically holding a oversized, melee-centric object between your hands wasn’t epic enough, having it delicately spin while firing a deathray that hits harder the further away your target is just screams kitten! AND IT NEVER GETS OLD!!!
To be honest, if it wasn’t for the greatsword, I’d probably main an elementalist and would be just as jaded as the rest of them because the class isn’t what I had in mind either.
I think the bigger issue is out of combat speed. I’m practically married to my focus because that’s the only reliable speed boost mesmers have. Once we get any decent alternative, I can start looking at using the offhand sword and torch.
As for the subject matter, my biggest peeve about counterattack skills is that we’re vulnerable to multi-hit attacks during the counterattack animation and that’s counter-intuitive. The risk of using these blocks is that they may not be triggered, wasting attack time and opportunity. If they are triggered, we should be distorted or blurred until the animation is over so they properly serve the initial purpose of blocking.
Here’s my 2 cents.
- Keep the root. The animation is awesome but, like Pyro said, it needs purpose.
- Increase the aoe radius. Mesmers are in desperate need of more aoe attacks.
- The attack pulses damage and converts boons into vulnerability
– Only one boon per pulse
– If enemy has no boons, slight damage increase - Channel only pulses twice normally (starting pulse and one after the first second)
– Can be held up to 5 seconds if the players holds the button down
– Last pulse shatters the illusionary sword and is a blast finisher
On a related note, if you go with the “hold key to lengthen channel” mechanic, there are other skills that would benefit from it too. Elementalist’s Churning Earth immediately comes to mind. It would be great if the channel pulsed Torment every second instead of cripple, since the earth attunement is more about condition damage.
I use the same character from beginning to end and for all dungeon paths. That’s part of what makes it so weird.
I’m okay with pets sniffing out the real mesmer. I see it as a level of depth and a way to keep us on our toes. My only problem is that our pets don’t attack their pets.
Is anyone else having this problem? I’ve done it 3 days in a row and only received 26 silver while the other two paths give me the usual gold. I want to see if I can find an answer here before I fill out a bug report.
I’m saddened to hear about your plight NaGa. What hurts even more is to say that we did tell the devs this would happen and they did it anyway.
I so desperately want to welcome you with open arms, help you pick out the perfect fuchsia outfit and let you see the joy that comes with screwing the minds of your opponents. However, for the first time since this game was available to the public, I have to say, no. Making a mesmer is no longer worth it. Too many skills are broken and have remained so for far too long. The changes to the leveling system will make a class that was already difficult to level a nightmare. The traits commonly enjoyed around 40 can only be taken much later and that’s only after you do the event to acquire them or buy them outright. The switch of mantra traits makes dungeon runs harder. The nerf to Power Block took the shine off of that new trait. The nerf to vigor hurt those whom used deceptive evasion… The list goes on and on.
There are very few good things here and, thankfully, one of which is completely out of Anet’s control: the community. Though there are the usual members prone to exaggeration and the whining that’s become commonplace, this is the only forum that will not only treat newbies like family but will actually and wholeheartedly help all other professions seeking solutions in taking us down. You won’t find that anywhere else, save the players helping players forum.
I play normally with skills 1 to 5 set as normal. Skill 6 is Q, 7 is E, 8 is mouse 4, 9 is mouse 5 and 0 is the mouse scroll button. This really has nothing to do with me being left-handed. I can simply react faster with this setup.
While on the subject, I wish there was a way to flip the weapon animations so that my characters were left-handed. It’s a nitpick but sometimes I find it jarring that they are right-handed. It just doesn’t feel right.
I can’t call Deceptive Evasion bad design because it opens up a mindgame possibility that I absolutely love. When I dodge, I do so to avoid something that is likely to kill the clone I leave behind which, in turn, will trigger all of my on-death traits. The only time I dodge just to generate a clone is when I’m using a staff with high precision, condition damage and Sharper Images. I don’t see how either of these are bad game design.
Deceptive evasion was a minor adept talent when the game started. It got moved up because it was too good. While I personally hate the nerf, I agree with it being moved. It was just too good to be an adept trait.
For that very reason, I also have to insist that Illusionary Persona stays as a grandmaster. Not only is it good on its own but, because it treats the mesmer as an illusion, any trait that procs off of a shatter won’t need any illusions to work. That makes it highly adaptable for builds that don’t even focus on shatters for damage. It’s just too good to be placed any lower than where it is.
I only see one downside to this change. Some professions, such as mesmers, rely heavily on traits just to, “not suck”. Moving them 20 levels up will make the already painful task of leveling a mesmer nearly unbearable.
On the other hand, I do agree with consolidating the trait points from 70 to 14. That just makes a lot more sense.
I too wonder why you guys bother buying keys. If you just want the weapon skins, it’s cheaper to wait for prices to even out and then buy the skins off the TP.
I find #2 to be very useful in pve as it can save a dodge plus torment is an awesome condition because mobs are too stupid to stop moving when affected by it.
Now it does take time to get use to the skill as you have to learn when mobs attack. If they don’t hit me within 1.2 seconds, I just hit the skill again to blind them and there are some mesmers traits that work off of blinds.
The auto-attack on the other hand… I can’t find a place for it. It’s too slow for direct damage and generating clones with it feels clunky. Sometimes I even stop auto attacking or switch weapons because I don’t want the clone to overwrite a phantasm.
I feel torment is better suited to mesmers than fear. The only thing fear does is create distance and we have plenty of ways to do that already. On the other hand, we need more damaging conditions since Anet decided that confusion shouldn’t be threatening.
Every time I see a mesmer use GS #5 in PvE, I wish there was friendly fire in this game …
Most people are not running a BI/CI build or know when it is appropriate to use it…
If they knew when it’s appropriate to use it, they wouldn’t run such a build in PvE. They wouldn’t even run that weapon, since it does not offer any advantage to the alternatives.
As a main mesmer anytime I see anybody doing anything wrong for mesmer I cry a little inside.
Skill 5 is still there in PvE, I might as well use it though if the mob is close enough. Theres not a advantage not to.
It pushes the enemy away from your allies and their AOEs.
Or it can push a group of enemies into a wall so AOEs are more efficient. It can also interrupt some attacks like graveling pounces and bandit twirls. It’s useful for putting distance between the party and enemies when running past trash mobs that aggro or defending NPCs.
The reason I don’t do either of these bosses is because the loot is so horrific. Don’t get me wrong. I love that they are in the game as I love to take on hardcore challenges from time to time. I just want them to be worth my time.
1. Auto loot
2. Auto loot
3. Auto loot
4. Auto loot
5. Auto loot
Autolooting is pretty much in the game. I set mine to press one button and collect everything around me. It’s awesome.