Guild Wars 2

Levetty.1279:

What are you talking about? The example you gave relies entirely on getting off that shatter burst after which it can do kitten all. “Chronophantasma” shatter is the condi build we’ve been telling you is much better and the only real choice for mesmer, thats why its marked as Meta.

It was YOU that said shatter doesn’t work, now you’re pointing out the spec that relies on shatters as the best one. Uff… some people. Yes we all know it’s meta for top teams in ranked play with their similiar comps. That shouldn’t prevent you from thinking on your own.

If you actually read the posts you’d understand it was an example. Taking down people just fine without over-reliance on shatter hitting, Mesmer is really slippery when you play it right.

Interesting point though, I very rarely get taken down on my mes cuz of our many anti-kill-me tools, but just checking out the end of the match details I rarely reach 200k damage with a decent killscore, whereas my rev most games are 350-500k. And that’s where you see the power of the mesmer, shutting people down. I probably use the daze shatter as much if not more than mind wrack. Then again I play mostly close recap/def or far assault and stay away from group fights – it’s pugs and I just want to win :P

Don’t use focus it just slows you down. Use a pistol for interrupt and a better phanta, it’s damage you lack afterall. With right utils/skills most mob groups won’t give you a bigger issue.

What you want to do is spread your phantas across mobs if there’s a group, don’t pop all on one unless it’s a bossy type. Make sure you get the chrono trait for respawning phantas when shattering. Try to keep the mobs grouped up if possible, GS #5 can help with this.

The utilities I’m using are blink for getting away from melees, decoy to get mobs off me, and well of calamity for more reliable AoE. Elite – use whatever.

Now there are still groups that can give you a lot of grief, large raptor packs for example. Just gotta get used to it and figure out a good order that works for you. Sword #3 for example is as much a defensive tool as it is a source of damage

If you wanna try something a bit more fun you could try going condi with staff and sword/torch. Burning does a lot of damage plus it’s aoe it’s kinda weird and you’ll have to re-gear somewhat but great fun in a weird way :P

Let us know how you get on as you continue!

Levetty.1279:

Shatter Mesmer isn’t a fairy, we can’t make it effective by believing hard enough.

The build isn’t shatter focus and that shouldn’t be so hard to understand. Also contrary to your point the build “Chronophantasma shatter” is marked as “current meta”. Ie, shatter. Condi hybrid, but a big focus on shatter.

Khyber.1284:

What? Unranked is less intense than ranked but what am I supposed to do? stand around in the lobby or mindlessly slaughter in pve? “but they play unranked themselves as well” pffft

My point was that it’s apparently “forum cool” to laugh at how every single person in unranked mode is a mindless scrub, yet so many forum heroes are playing unranked themselves – that means maybe unranked isn’t exclusively scrub and maybe, just maybe it’s not 100% worthless as a base of testing.

Fay.2357:

Phantasms go away after if your opponent is competent enough to cleave them down. They have basically no health, so it only takes one or two autoattacks to do.

If you’re so sure this works on players that aren’t imitating a target golem, feel free to make a video of you killing competent players with this convoluted combo that can be countered without any significant effort.

As I said it’s not about one combo itself, that is simply the potential.

And I’m sorry if I offend you by suggesting something else is possible to run, but it seems to me that we can definitely expect condi chrono to take a hit in the next balance update outside of just the amulet – maybe actually being open to alternatives will alleviate some of the frustration and anger that will follow what is essentially a necessary downtuning. Rather start exploring this now.

PS: Everyone says everyone in unranked is a target golem/noob etc, but they play unranked themselves as well… Strange.

Silverkey.2078:

The point of Fay is simply that power shatter has 1 burst. That’s all. If you miss mind wrack you have no damage left.

On the other hand condi shatter can use every shatter for damage and recharge them all with the signet for another round, while always keeping max illusion count thanks to traits.

As always, the problem with power mesmer is the lack of sustained damage. We have one of the highest burst in the game. But this burst is highly telegraphed and with all passive procs, blocks/evades/invuln and innate tankiness, it does not suffice to pressure the enemy. Sadly our follow-up damage is ridiculously low.

I agree missing mind wrack does hurt you, but it is in no way a one-trick pony like you’re describing. Phantas don’t go away after and the typical damage I see with sword/gs phanta + my own stuff is roughly 6-8k when they pop off their attacks. Hardly call that follow-up nothing, add to that you won’t have a cd issue with them because of trait respawn and you can keep them up constantly. GS KB adds good utility for preventing stomps, peel, interrupt and point def/decap – adds a lot to how kitten slippery and frustrating a mesmer is to fight.

I get the point of condi chronoshatter but that specc being strong doesn’t make everything else not viable. I don’t like it because I find it horribly boring, but I won’t deny that it’s good. I just think some people are throwing around “not viable” because they read that somewhere. But really, power works. It might take a lot more fiddling to be really succesful and yeah you do need your utils to avoid getting creamed and yes you can get screwed over badly if you are constantly looking to land one big combo – adapting to the situation instead of looking for a one size fit all approach that you can menorize and repeat at will.

Edit: Just adding that it’s perfectly fine to run this with pistol instead of sword offhand, the swordsman can be really annoying to get off considering all the ledges in the pvp map, and you get a stun/daze for multi in return for block/daze wave. It’s of course a tradeoff between the phantas in the sense that duelist most likely won’t get his full damage off, but the swordsman might get dodged/blocked. Duelist helps for peeling aegis for example.

Shiro utility, constant swiftness with herald?

Levetty.1279:

Crowley.8761:

Levetty.1279:

Please tell me you do actually know the difference in play styles between condi chrono and power shatter?

Doesn’t really matter does it? This guy just proved that doing damage in GW2 is impossible. He already covered any kind of direct damage, I just wanted to add cleanse so we can establish that Mesmer cannot do any damage of any type to any players in high level pvp.

A simple no would have sufficed.

Sigh… sometimes it’s nice to have something sweet after everything being so salty.

Levetty.1279:

Please tell me you do actually know the difference in play styles between condi chrono and power shatter?

Doesn’t really matter does it? This guy just proved that doing damage in GW2 is impossible. He already covered any kind of direct damage, I just wanted to add cleanse so we can establish that Mesmer cannot do any damage of any type to any players in high level pvp.

josephleahy.2943:

I am looking for a good WvW build my main objective is Havoc and smaller group fights / roaming. i have been running a condi build but am not a fan i feel weak compared to other revs. so any builds / ideas guys and gals?

Well if we just go by logic here, if you’re in small group fights a lot chances are your allies are gonna want your buffs, that means herald which you were probably running anyway. A condi build is nice and all but considering the lack of a real ranged condi weapon for rev, swapping to power might be a good idea.

I think most people use at least a hammer in WvW and why wouldn’t you, you need some sort of range in a lot of situations so I’d go with that too.

As for your 2nd weapon choice, what do you want to do? For me I’d say smaller group fights need control. Staff is great for that. You got your interrupt, you got your heal and #5 is a great tool for preventing a stomp and close down channeling of big damage spells, as well as peel melee’s off your squishier classes. Another option here is sword/shield, where you got a save if you get focused, another evade/invul with good damage in form of sword #3, then you got your protection boon with a heal – as well as superior damage to staff. Stomp interrupt can be done with the hammer here but it’s slow and unreliable as a panic button. If however you wanna go full ham with some control and gap close, sword/axe is your thing.

My thoughts at least.

Ross Biddle.2367:

Crowley.8761:

Ross Biddle.2367:

Then a full power thief/rev discovers you’re as soft as an overly plump school boy with a pension for lollypops, and they instagib you mid first phantasm cast XD

Full yolo power chrono might pack a heavy punch, but there’s a huge cost. Especially when you compare them to ammy’s like mercs.

Ok, I understand now. You want a build that is strong against everyone and weak against no one

Context Crowley. You were arguing there’s power in power chrono. I’m merely pointing out the difference between running what you’re saying is “oh so great” and what merc provided. It’s the difference between viability and not

I think the main problem is that people take “viability” completely out of context. If this game was more popular with pro teams really going to town on it, do you think the current “meta” would stand as it is? Definitely not. Would “viable specs” constantly change as a result of the actual team composition? Definitely yes.

I also think that most people have basically no idea how to judge a “viable spec”. Just because something is posted on metabattle doesn’t mean it’s gospel, sometimes people play the “best build” for their class for weeks and months until some enterprising individual comes up with a fun alternative that is actually stronger, then that becomes the “meta build”. And all the people saying EVERYTHING ELSE was unviable now switch to this and claim EVERYTHING ELSE is unviable. Just the way it goes.

If however you’re on a serious team building around your comp, everything changes. Including your own mentality towards your character and role as whole. Maybe you spec your char in a way that makes you utility/dps but completely incapable of handling anyone by yourself? In a team focused game that’s ok – your strategy would then be to never be by yourself. There’s a major difference there that I think are lost in the fluff of angry people complaining about everything.

Sure, my build might not be the best, hell it might be completely unsuitable for high level play. But it serves a purpose for what I’m doing with it. Of course you’ll come and say “But oh then you have no idea, you can’t possibly comment on the REAL pvp and ONLY chrono/condi is viable because this guy said so”. It’s just not true. There are too many factors involved to determine a one size fit all and I promise you that IF the interest in pvp was tenfold, what we today consider current meta would maybe be one of many options, it’s also possible it wouldn’t even be seriously considered for serious play.

Ross Biddle.2367:

Then a full power thief/rev discovers you’re as soft as an overly plump school boy with a pension for lollypops, and they instagib you mid first phantasm cast XD

Full yolo power chrono might pack a heavy punch, but there’s a huge cost. Especially when you compare them to ammy’s like mercs.

Ok, I understand now. You want a build that is strong against everyone and weak against no one

Fay.2357:

Let’s say you try to burst another chrono that way. You set it up, you land the swap, and then they press 2. Oops, no burst. Or maybe they press 4. Oops, no burst. Or what if they dodge the swap? Oops, no burst.

What about against an engineer? You drop the phantasm, aaaand it’s dead from aoe and cleave. Then you try to burst aaaand they block it with hammer.

What about against a revenant? You land the swap and burst buuuut they popped glint heal and full healed instead. Or maybe they used crystal hibernation. Or maybe they just cleaved down the phantasms as they spawned with their strong autoattacks.

Any sort of burst relying on multiple steps all lining up properly into an instant of burst can be mitigated by short duration active defense used appropriately. Mesmer burst has the added bonus of being mitigated simply by strong aoe pressure or dodging the immobilize on the swap. Landing that whole combo requires an opponent that doesn’t take any offensive or defensive actions to stop you. While people like this exist, they’re essentially just target golems.

Yes, in Guild Wars 2 there are ways to avoid damage Should I list every cleanse and say “Oops no condi”?

I’m gathering that what you want is a build that works against everyone regardless of specc and is weak to nothing? Seems perfectly reasonable.

Fay.2357:

I’ll take ‘Things that only happen to target golems’ for 1200, Alex.

It’s actually not that difficult to set up, is it? You start off with GS, do your thing, phanta up, swap weps, phanta up, drop well and you’re ready to burst. 3-3-2-F1.

Then you can just wait for your new phantas to hit again while doing whatever needs to be done, be it healing, dodging, blink, stealth, whatever. I think the real skill gap comes when deciding the best time for a split – which I totally suck at.

If that combo is golem only for most people I don’t think the power build strength is the main problem…

Silverkey.2078:

So PvP mesmer is only viable playing condi

I’ll quote myself in response to this:

Crowley.8761:

I think some of you guys are reading far too many meta guides and doing too little testing.

How much damage do you think you put out if say, you run gs+s/s power with chrono traits and you got your gs phanta and sword phanta out, you land a swap into blurred frenzy while double shattering after additional phanta hits while your target is standing in well of calamity?

I found out today. Not disappointed. Add some fun use of ContiSplit on top of that and good times were had by all.

What do you think the outcome was?

I think some of you guys are reading far too many meta guides and doing too little testing.

How much damage do you think you put out if say, you run gs+s/s power with chrono traits and you got your gs phanta and sword phanta out, you land a swap into blurred frenzy while double shattering after additional phanta hits while your target is standing in well of calamity?

I found out today. Not disappointed. Add some fun use of ContiSplit on top of that and good times were had by all.

Substance E.4852:

You do realize most pro athletes would act the same way if they weren’t under contract to maintain a sense of decorum right?

Don’t get upset just because you suddenly have to face the reality that “pro gamers” act just like regular gamers with a massive ego inflation.

Well you have a point there. I don’t know if this is correct but it seems to me like GW2 teams aren’t really sponsored by a larger gaming group like the teams in other popular games are. These groups tend to have codes of conduct that their players have to adhere to and therefore they act far more professional as competitors in those games. Especially teams sponsored by major hardware developers are very strict when it comes to conduct, they are representing the company afterall.

So it becomes a catch-22 really, people wouldn’t behave like this if they were sponsored, yet they can’t get sponsored unless there’s more interest in the game as an esport and with people behaving like this more interest in the game as an esport is unlikely.

MattStriker.7032:

That sounds like lag issues. Have you checked your ping while trying this?

Yeah it averages about 50.

Trigr.6481:

This couldn’t be more false. The “intended” purpose for people to buy the expansion is to have an add on to build diversity, however what the people got is being forced to take out of necessity because of how strong it is “for the vast majority of elite specializations”. Instead of burying your head in the sand like you suggest, I’d rather actually make suggestions of how to actually improve the game than to fold.

Countless

Seconded – it’s a matter of diversity not how strong the build is, claiming that is a bait to get people to purchase the expansion is just reaching.

“Freedom of speech” isn’t on trial here, he is free to say whatever he wants. But just like the poster above me says, there is an issue of professionalism. It’s called Pro League, not whiny kids league. I’m all for people displaying their “colorful personalities” and all that but this is just beyond what can be considered acceptable behavior and a reason why a lot of people think esports are a complete joke.

If esports are to be taken seriously then the so-called professionals need to act as such and lead by example – this is the exact opposite of that. I for one would dearly like to see GW2 evolve and grow as an esport into a larger competitive scene but behavior like this does a lot to damage that.

Hello,

I’m having some issues with the adventures in the HoTs zones, more specifically the mechanics of unique skills related to these. I’ll give two examples:

The flying circus in Verdant Brink – Sometimes when I hit a speed boost it works like it should, but 90% of the time it either shakes me in place or teleports me back and forth and resets my speed to 0, causing me to fail the event.

Sanctum Scramble in Auric Basin – Same issue here, either skills don’t work at all, they teleport me in place or they simply activate up to a second after I click them, once again causing me to fail jumps and therefore the event.

I am running the 64 bit client on a GTX 980.

Is there anything I can do to alleviate these issues?

Thank you.

I think you people saying Anet needs “a slap in the face” need a little reality check. You wanna slap them for sponsoring a pro league of their game? You wanna slap them for the cash prizes they are giving out with most likely very little return? You wanna slap them for at least trying to make this work?

How about slapping that unprofessional crybaby instead.

And no, I’m not really an Anet fanboy considering the state of class balance right now but they’ve done more to bring PvP to a grander level than any MMO dev I’ve seen.

What do you think the point of them looking like and having the same name as the Mesmer is really? What do you think the point of the Mesmer class is?

What is the point of this thread…? First you scold them then you say it’s great that they’re fixing stuff.

This would be insane. Insanely funny for those of us who watch proleague.

Varezenem.2813:

Tyriark.7825:

Tbh it all depends on how you use the tools given to you.

Not sure what your point is.
I remeber that ranger, he is weak...

I think his point was to brag a little, I mean a guy asks a simple question about defensive weps, other guy posts a picture of his damage in a game. Makes sense no?

I like reading these threads. I dunno the general age group of people that tend to post on forums but if some of these are actual adults, wow. If this makes you cry like a kitten (if kittens cried) I wonder what an actual problem would do to you.

I think it’s great that Anet spends the effort on balancing and supporting PvP, even though the interest doesn’t seem to be particularly high. Balancing classes is insanely difficult since you can’t ever anticipate what builds/styles people can come up with when you have this level of diversity available in both weapons and skillpoints. Process takes time and constructive feedback helps. Kittening and kittening doesn’t help, although we all love kittens.

Hello,

I’ve been away from Guild Wars 2 for about 2 years and I haven’t touched Heart of Thorns at all. I enjoyed PvP quite a lot back in the day and I’m looking to get back into it. Rather than sifting through pages upon pages of buff/nerf posts I thought I’d just ask my question here in hopes of a sensible answer:

I basically had 3 characters that I rotated between, a Mesmer, a Thief and a Guardian, all of which ended up being my main in chronological order. Now as I am getting back into the game, is there any class that is more desirable than others? Bear in mind I don’t mind playing support as a Guardian for example, I actually thought that was quite a lot of fun.

Just to be clear, I am not asking if any of them are OP or FotM, I don’t care about that and if any of them are I’d rather stay away from it. Basically I am just asking if there are any problems with any of them that makes them unviable or heavily dependant on gimmicks?

Thank you.

- Crowley

I’m usually running GS/Staff or GS/Sword+Focus in WvW. Focus for the dragging power if we’re attacking a keep or tower. Though I won’t say staff is a “great” weapon, it certainly has its uses. When defending a wall it can be really tricky to make your Phantasmal Warlock do anything, which means the useful stuff in Staff at that point is Chaos Storm and autoattack. Basically using it because of the lack of options (Sword pointless from a wall and Scepter is just horrible in general), something which disturbs me a bit with the Mesmer.

GS however is a very strong weapon, it has a high damage output from the Phantasm, the AoE knockback is just lovely and Mirror Blade is extremely fun to use Mind Stab remains however, in my opinion, one of the very worst weapon skills in the game.

Just thought I’d add something fun I did earlier with backstab and signets that give might etc: http://i914.photobucket.com/albums/ac344/Takomuhra/gw038.jpg

Sure you can prolly get more, especially if you have someone else buffing you, butkittenis it fun still

Agreed here, scepter is pretty horrible and torch seems only useful for the stealth. I mean, a 24 second cooldown on phantasm that applies 1 measly stack of confusion? :S And while confusion builds are pretty fun to play with, we have no way of steadily applying it, as it is more of “burst condition”. Sure we can reach high stacks of it, but anyone that actually watches their conditions and sees 10+ stacks of confusion knows that they should just hang back for a little while until it runs off, as confusion as an extremely low duration considering the effort you go to to stack it up properly.

Lazrial.1083:

you cannot compare money drops between different MMO’s, if every humanoid dropped silver then prices would be even higher and your money would be worth less, the fact that you play for 3 hours and others play for 10+ means you will always have less than them in the game. you will always be poorer by around the same ratio as you are now regardless of how things drop as people who invest more time get more gold.

Not true, by just being clever instead of grinding something you are completely able to make several gold per hour.

Bump, this issue is close to my heart

Swish.2463:

It should be noted that dungeon armor is harder to gain due to its rarer skins. you can buy or craft exotic armor in 4 hours or less if you have the materials and level for it..

Yes, but not with the stats you are going for most often. Even when you combine different sets you end up with a really weird set of stats.

Yesterday I was trying to discover how to get gear for both of my max level characters, Thief and Mesmer. I am currently wearing crafted rare items which is fine for the most part, thought there were some weird stat balances going on, but it is just placeholders for Exotic gear anyway.

Now, I clearly remember seeing several interviews where AreaNet have said “This game is not about grinding. It is not about preparing to have fun”, so naturally I thought items with the stats I wanted wouldn’t be too difficult to get so that I could kit out my characters in their first of at least 2-3 different sets I had planned on getting for various speccs. All of this naturally aimed towards making myself stronger in WvWvW. Then I started searching for the gear with the stats I wanted. And I found it. For 180-300 tokens from some dungeon a piece. Now I asked around and people told me that you get about 15 tokens for each dungeon run you do, then +15 if it is your first run of the day. I honestly found this whole concept quite shocking. As I quoted earlier, they have said on multiple occasions that this game is not at all about “preparing to have fun”. As such I am assuming that either running a dungeon 50-100 times to get items with the stats you actually want is something ArenaNet considers fun, or their whole statement was a blatant, outright lie.

Meanwhile, certain classes going for certain speccs are fine with the crafted gear, as it has exactly the stats they want. So effectively, in order to get items with the stats I want, I am being forced to farm my gear, doing one instance per day for almost 2 months because I chose one specc over another. That hardly seems fair to me… While there are probably many people out there thinking this is just another entitled casual that wants everything for free, think about what they said prior to the game’s launch about things like these.

Now I don’t mind at all that legendaries are hard to get, I wouldn’t even mind at all that exotics were hard to get, if it actually required you to do something difficult or challenging. I don’t consider running the same dungeon about 50 times difficult, challenging or fun. And if I want to have to option to play with a different specc, that’s a whole new instance and a whole new area of grinding all over again. How can you say what you said to your playerbase, even though at that point you must’ve known that it was an outright lie?

No idea if this is Norn only but I’m trying out a female Norn Warrior at the moment, and the way she swings the sword with the autoattack like she can barely lift and then does Hundred Blades with no problems seems extremely weird to me. I doubt a person that could barely lift a Greatsword would ever become a Warrior or any sort of fighting person at all. Am I the only one that thinks this looks absolutely rediculous?

And then you switch to Hammer and she has no problems swinging that one, although with the off-balance construction and heavy head that should actually be harder to swing.

Really hope they take a look at these animations because the character just feels extremely weak because of them.

Imspecial.3206:

I would love Arenanet to be more transparent with the loot mechanics, mob aggro trigger variables, power scaling on tooltips and the likes.

Not at all. Finally a game where we don’t have an addon for “threat” or “drop chance for x, y and z”. Takes away about 75% of the fun of the game when you know exactly what’s gonna happen and exactly what you’re gonna get for doing it.

Power scaling tooltips and a bit more information on stats, sure. But “wowhead-style” information? No… please dear Anet, no.

So this is a thread about wanting gold to be easier to get… Please no, just… no!

Finally we get a game where money actually matters, where you don’t get 50 000 gold by mining some random ore patch for 1 hour. You have to work for it here, be happy and consider it a challenge.

6k+ on Berserker, 2,4k per autoattack (max range), 1800-1900 each Mirror Blade hit. That seem pointless to you?

How about the awesome AoE knockback? That certainly does not seem pointless to me.

Now Mind Stab in its current condition is probably the worst weapon skill in the entire game, I’ll give you that.

Problem with Greatsword as I see it is that you have to stack immense +damage stuff to reach anywhere close to these numbers. For a Greatsword it certainly has incredibly low base damage. Please note that the above numbers are taken from a gimmicky specc with 16% more damage from Mantras and so on, I still think it’s probably the strongest weapon in our arsenal, but that only speaks to what the other weapons are really :P Scepter for instance… bleh!

Focus has very many uses. You’re talking about utility, well how about dragging people off the walls of a tower in WvWvW?

Find the sword to be quite hilarious as well since the swordsman does double the damage of the pistol guy if you’re power specced.

Really suggest you try to move away from the straight cookiecutter builds and try to learn to survive without relying on certain cds. Helps a lot.

I’d like this, but simply can’t see it happening. Would prefer it if they could make the scepter a bit more interesting than it is at the moment.

I’d love to see them adress the problems on the spanish servers right now. Since they didn’t make any spanish-speaking NA servers, the Brazilians and other spanish-speaking South-Americans are currently playing on Spanish EU servers, which means that they are heavily populated at all times during the day. Myself coming from Seafarer’s rest which seems to be pretty much only europeans, we have no way of competing with them in wvw. Even though we beat them back easily during the daytime and prime time, at night they just zerg us down and we lose everything again.

This isn’t as much a bug as it is just bad planning by ArenaNet though in my opinion. But when servers can stay this heavily populated at all times during the day, obviously they will have a major advantage against other servers in wvw.

Try to ctrl+right click the skill. If there’s an arrow around the portrait that means you’ve turned on autocast.

Biggest annoyance for me is that when you use it in water your character becomes immobilized indefinately like you mentioned. As for the roulette-style function of this skill… meh.