Guild Wars 2

Spawn point positions on existing maps could be an advantage/disadvantage to the different teams.

Also not sure whether 4 per team or should be less – maybe 3 per team? Would be more.burden on individual players, but because you’ve got many players on the map anyway they shouldn’t be focused more than another team.

That could be another problem – ganging up on weaker teams/players and farming them. Not sure how to prevent this when more than two teams – maybe have variable player kill value – for example players in the leading team are worth more points when killed compared to players in the last team. This should encourage other teams to kill the leading team players for more points.
This should be variable – so every time a team changes position in the scoreboard their player kill value increased or decreases accordingly. The higher your score, the more you’re worth essentially.

This allows all players to keep playing till the end of the match (no downtime or waiting), but should prevent cheap tactics.

That’s all I can think of off the top of my head at the moment, will add more if I think of it.

Vee Wee is certainly more adorable than those fearsome five in the OP!

Adorable? :o

Those asura look terrifying!

Because butterflies.

The thing about being a projectile is for me not about how well it works – for sure it should work ok if like mirror blade.

No the problem is that it takes a skill that had the potential to be something with a little uniqueness, and turns it into a fairly dull copy of another skill on another weapon set. If the animation is done in a way that makes sword #3 feel unique, and not simply mirror blade 2.0 with the ability to port to your clone, then I’ll be more happy to accept it.

If Anet really have no clue – and I mean absolutely zero ideas into improving the leap/swap mechanic, then I will concede and accept more mundane alternatives, because a boring skill that functions 100% of the time is better than a unique skill that rarely works.

I hope though that they can fix and maintain some decent potential for deception with sword #3.

Me Games Ma.8426:

Curunen.8729:

Regarding Swap – I’d prefer for the stunbreak to be removed (yes, a nerf), but in exchange restore the ability to swap to where the clone last is, even if it has died.

Me Games Ma.8426:

…blablabla… // snipped
I guess the next balance patch will fix our iWarden to not block unblockable projectiles and Swap being a stunbreaker.

From the Mesmerforums :P

Yeah I saw that – hope they consider the exchange of stunbreak for ability to swap with dead clone – although who am I kidding… they’ll likely just do what you wrote and maybe also reduce BF evade time to 1s, and put final nail in coffin for sword! xD

Me Games Ma.8426:

They fixed iLeap to match the description? Well here’s the description of Pistol Whip

• Dual Wield. Pistol-whip your foe, stunning them, then slash repeatedly with your sword.
• Damage(9x): xyz
• Stun: 1/2 seconds
• Range: 130

What else does it? Ahh I know! You evade while attacking. pls “fix” it anet. The skill doesn’t match its description.

Heh, good catch.

Regarding Swap – I’d prefer for the stunbreak to be removed (yes, a nerf), but in exchange restore the ability to swap to where the clone last is, even if it has died.

Without this, sword #3 loses all potential for mind games – because you’re encouraged forced to use Swap ASAP, or waste it. In that case they may as well remove swap altogether and just have us leap at the target – seriously dull and uninspired and devoid of any skillful play.

Baiting and timing swap was the best part about the skill. If stunbreaks on low cooldown are a worry then by all means remove the stunbreak ability. But please restore Swap’s functionality to how it used to work before this “fix”, if you have any desire to encourage skillful play.

I want to play this right now!

lazycalm.5186:

Runewolf.8456:

pretty easy to kill, just go for the one that isn’t standing still auto attacking you.

By the time you find the right one, you’re downed.
The deception is just too strong in this game. Mesmer was the easiest class I played in PvP, simply because you can do what you want to, most opponents will just be distracted with your clones, spending the she fight trying to target the real you.

Mesmers are a disease in PvP

I’m usually polite and never usually one to say this, but in this case…

…L2P.

Anyone who’s played this game for more than 5 minutes (slight exaggeration for effect) will rarely be deceived.

Anyone who’s actually good will never be deceived.

Anyone who is deceived needs to get better.

There’s only one single problem when fighting Mesmer – and that is fluent use of target cycling – pressing the right buttons to reselect the correct target. I will accept this part can be annoying because of the targeting system – but again it’s just a matter of getting used to it. If I can get used to the targeting system in GW2 (and I used to seriously struggle with the tab targeting, being used to games with crosshairs), then anyone can.

Anyone who can’t spot the real Mesmer in ~ 1 second needs to L2P.

Never had too much problem with nearest enemy and cycling next enemy – nearest enemy tends to prioritise players over AI in any case. I don’t often have to click select unless I’ve cycled to AI accidently and there’s a few petting zoos to cycle through.

But yeah, it’s something we just have to live with – the targeting system will always be kitten in my opinion.

It boils down to the fact that the overall match result is only partly affected by your skill, whether you play above the average expectation with your class/build or not – but the match outcome is always fairly largely affected by factors beyond your control.

However, achieving higher than average success in varying situations within a match (some of which have been mentioned in here) is always affected and determined by your skill with your class/build.

While these situations mostly go unrecognised and unrewarded, they are by far the better measuring stick for self evaluation and measure of success/skill.

Only problem would be limited number of utility slots – and we already have too many must have utilities and Condi cleanses.

If I could have a 4th utility slot though, I like the idea of RtL, or maybe even lightning reflexes.

Oh wait warrior Kick! This would be so fun to use. Blink -> kick would be a fun combo.

PU builds with shadow refuge… vomit xD Not touching that!

Edit: Oh, I wouldn’t mind having judge’s intervention or shadow step either.

If we’re going with weapon skills as well then I want the entire ranger greatsword. Seriously my perfect Mesmer build would use Mesmer GS for ranged and ranger GS for melee/mobility. Hands down my two favourite weapons in the game – such a shame you can only use one at a time.

Can you imagine – swoop, hilt bash, dodge shatter, diversion, maul, etc… my god I don’t want to think about it too much – would be the ultimate GS mindkitten build. I don’t think I’d ever play anything else or use any other weapons at all.

This is exactly the mindset I take – playing games within a game.

NinjaEd.3946:

Curunen.8729:

NinjaEd.3946:

I never understood how this skill bugs exactly. It performs what looks like [Savage Leap] which does go up the y axis. How it gets stuck on a stone or step beats me, but any bug fixing helps.

I’d hope the skill bar for Mesmer focuses on fixing bugs so that the whining stops like that they aren’t powerful enough when really its just bug fixes that would alone buff them a lot for a smooth QoL. To this day, a well played Mesmer either doesn’t like to die(stale mate) or scares the hell out of me and forces me to retreat or crawl into my grave so I’m not so sure they need a buff, just bug fixes so their other kitten works. Even when I spectate I watch them destroy people, or watch my guildies roam in wvw and let them melt people.

I’m curious – have you personally played mesmer for any significant period of time?

I could equally say thieves qq over nothing and don’t need buffs to anything other than p/p from what I experience fighting against them – but I am aware my viewpoint is severely restricted by not actively playing a thief to high level or for any significant amount of time, so I cannot make that judgement.

Certain things on mesmer do need buffing, many things need fixing and a few things could be nerfed. I won’t write a long wall of text because posting from phone and I cba.

I watch, I ask in game, and I read their builds (not all but a good amount) and look up how their skills behave. I’m not saying I play Mesmer, I’m saying I still see them wreck faces and that’s with all the glorious bugs they have. So from that I can say, fix the bugs and they can live with some peace.

Just like when the ileap was “fixed” people kittened and moaned that anet was just further breaking Mesmer when only a handful were upset that the skill still performed like a trashcan drum. Its bug problems Mesmer is facing, I bet there would be a fraction of the complaints from the Mesmer community if the bugs were fixed vs buffing them and still having all the bugs to deal with. That’s my problem, Mesmer players saying they’re weak rather than bugged. Two totally different things.

I will point out one or two things that need buffs:
- scepter auto attack – at least increase projectile speed.
- iMage – in damage/conditions/aoe or something
- arcane thievery – cooldown reduction
- mind stab – damage/aoe/new effect, etc
- blinding befuddlement – remove ICD to make glamour spec viable again

I could list many more straight buffs to skills and traits (but my time is very limited in typing this post), which anyone playing mesmer will be familiar with. These are not bug fixes, and are generally not observed by people who don’t play mesmer and think everything is fine and dandy aside from bugs.

GW2 camera and targeting is still kitten.

Hopefully by GW3 they can drop this archaic targeting/camera system for full action combat. I’m not asking for a TPS, but manual aiming of skills, soft lock targeting of skills (such as mass effect did with powers) and so on. I’m aware ESO has this, but I’ll wait for that to go f2p/b2p before trying it.

NinjaEd.3946:

I never understood how this skill bugs exactly. It performs what looks like [Savage Leap] which does go up the y axis. How it gets stuck on a stone or step beats me, but any bug fixing helps.

I’d hope the skill bar for Mesmer focuses on fixing bugs so that the whining stops like that they aren’t powerful enough when really its just bug fixes that would alone buff them a lot for a smooth QoL. To this day, a well played Mesmer either doesn’t like to die(stale mate) or scares the hell out of me and forces me to retreat or crawl into my grave so I’m not so sure they need a buff, just bug fixes so their other kitten works. Even when I spectate I watch them destroy people, or watch my guildies roam in wvw and let them melt people.

I’m curious – have you personally played mesmer for any significant period of time?

I could equally say thieves qq over nothing and don’t need buffs to anything other than p/p from what I experience fighting against them – but I am aware my viewpoint is severely restricted by not actively playing a thief to high level or for any significant amount of time, so I cannot make that judgement.

Certain things on mesmer do need buffing, many things need fixing and a few things could be nerfed. I won’t write a long wall of text because posting from phone and I cba.

chemiclord.3978:

This is one of those weird things that I’m not sure I understand why EITHER side is so adamant.

1) Why MUST we have mounts? It’s not like the maps in GW2 are massive. Even if you wanted to straight up run across an entire zone, you’re not looking at much more than a handful of minutes. I mean, is it a prestige thing? I don’t get why some players are so in love with them.

2) On the other hand… why are people so strongly AGAINST them? The waypoint method is superior in every way (the travel cost is a pittance). Mounts would be barely more than a silly vanity item. What would it really matter?

Seems like a really weird thing to be drawing battle lines over. I mean, as often as this topic comes up, we could mount every person who wants one on the dead horses that have been beaten over it.

Haha, that made me laugh.

But yeah I agree with this – no big deal either way.

Bigger picture => then also +Condi duration runes and food must be nerfed, because they’re equally broken and the main reason for people using -Condi duration stuff.

Personally I think all the things should remain as they are and just and a hard cap on +/-Condi duration at say 50%, or some other suitable number.

Oh and mesmers are kind of pigeonholed into speed boost runes in order to be mobile.

Blurred frenzy is one thing that could definitely do with a slight damage buff, whatever happens.

Delete Mesmer for sure – then I’ll finally be able to gtfo this sinking ship. :p
(that was a joke in case it wasn’t blindingly obvious – no class should be deleted)

Add – I like the monk idea – something that uses quarterstaff or different melee weapons. With ranger like acrobatic animations but no useless pet.

I will say that I’ve had some fantastic 1v1s against very good players in hotjoin, most recently with an ele on forest keep – yes 1v1… you know, that unsupported game mode that people will not tolerate in team/solo queue…

Yes thanks to the spectate/team swap nonsense fairly often matches snowball one way or the other.
But have you tried forcing yourself to play on the losing/outnumbered team in hotjoin? While you almost certainly won’t win the conquest, there is significant challenge to achieve minor personal goals – ie how long can I keep one cap for our team or how long can I troll a 1v3, etc.

And even then there are sometimes good close matches, with good players – shock horror, I know – this shouldn’t be happening in hotjoin! They should all be monkeys pressing 1. Added bonus is more emphasis on fighting than on perfect cap rotations – a hell of a lot more fun tbh. Nevermind the funky builds you’ll run into.

People seem to kitten on hotjoin for no reason. There’s only one problem with hotjoin at the moment which is the unbalanced team stacking. It’s not a skilless mode as some people seem to believe – especially when on the losing/outnumbered team.

I won’t mention Mesmer because it’s obvious.

2. Melee Power Ranger – specifically using GS and Sw/D, because I think the melee
animations are some of the best in the game (better than Mesmer GS animations) – hilt bash + maul on am asura is just so sexy. Really need to use an asura for maximum acrobatic animations!

3. Conjure weapon Ele – I’ve never been a fan of the attunement swapping on an ele, because I would prefer the ability to specialise in one or two elements. However conjure weapons – especially lightning hammer builds are just awesome. It is a shame it is completely useless in pvp, otherwise you can be sure I’d play this often!

4. Thief – first character I played, love p/p, the mobility and stealth – however weapon choices are a little boring for me, and the weapon animations and sound effects are not exactly amazing – especially when compared to Mesmer, ranger, ele, guard and warrior.

5. Guardian – love the theme, but really don’t like the mechanics in practice. The GS animations for example are really quite stupid to me. Ranger and Mesmer GS are 10 times more awesome to use. A shame because I like the concept of medi/dps guardian, especially fighting against one, but I find the weapon animations so silly to look at that I can’t bring myself to play it seriously. Best thing about guard is the hammer, although a little awkward to use in combat.

6. Warrior – I like the self sufficient theme with many weapons available. But again GS animations on ranger are far cooler – I guess you can tell by now that I love good GSs!
Not really a fan of the mechanics though – I’d love to play a full physical utility build (kick, etc) but you pretty much have to take certain utilities to be effective in pvp… :/

7. Engi – never felt the vibe tbh – too many buttons to press, too much ground targeting. I like some of the skills, but don’t enjoy playing for the most part.

8. Necro – don’t like the theme, don’t like the mechanics – think it’s boring, slow, ugly and just not fun to play.

Swatting these mosquitos is a real challenge for sure. Short of getting lucky with a good cc and burst (works on the bad or average p/d pests), I really don’t know a foolproof strategy – especially when you get a highly skilled player playing p/d – you’re most likely kittened either way.

Much prefer fighting d/x power burst thieves because at least there’s an element of counter play involved (when you compare with p/d).

First rule of mesmering – don’t act like a clone. :p

(you can have moderate success against bad players, but it’s a waste of time/effort against good players).

Whether or not you can see the burst coming is somewhat irrelevant.

At this point in time, many players if they know their in a fight with a stealth/direct damage burst thief, have the experience and knowledge to anticipate what such a thief is going to do – and in turn be ready to counter what they do, stealth or no stealth. Yes sometimes you will be caught out, usually if not aware there’s a thief in the area, but once in combat, it becomes a game of prediction. This of course does not include p/d perplexity parasites or perma evade spammers.

Compare that to warrior burst – which you can always see coming – however there’s a completely different combat dynamic. It becomes less of a game of predicting when the burst will come and countering it (as it is for thief), and more of a game of “I only have a certain time limit until the warriors offensive cooldowns will outpace my defensive cooldowns and dodging”, meaning I’ll have to fade out for a breather and reengage. Warriors are able to maintain continuous pressure and damage across all their attacks while burst skills refresh. There is a completely different kind of pressure when fighting a warrior compared to fighting a thief and so their burst skills cannot be directly compared. At least you can melt a thief with one or two good counter bursts.

On the flip side you can more easily use the environment to your advantage when fighting a warrior (for example to LoS a burst).

I’m saying this from a neutral point of view as a mesmer.

I’m in agreement with increasing the burst cooldown to at least 10 seconds, or some higher number.

The rest of it is fine to leave alone.

Kitten – I had worded a lengthy reply to the OP, but the wonderful forums decided to make it vanish…

As I can’t be kittened to write all that out again I’ll keep it simple:

PvE – beautiful landscape, mindless/predictable repetitive AI mobs – learn a set pattern to beat them, get more efficient at executing that pattern. Nothing ever changes.

WvW – boring as kitten landscape, however fighting other human beings requires you to be flexible, adaptable and have the ability to improvise in any given situation. By this very nature you will never experience exactly the same situation twice – now compare that to pve mobs and dungeons.

PvP also offers this, however the nature of that conquest game mode requires you to prioritise the match objectives above all else. The large scale open field nature of wvw gives an illusion of freedom to mostly do whatever you like – so even though there is an overall server score, you can decide in what capacity you desire to fight for your server, whether large scale battles or small scale roaming, or even ignoring ppt altogether and duelling in the OS. The baseline for wvw is that you enjoy gw2 combat and you enjoy fighting against other players.

Edit: once you’ve achieved the gear stats and skins you desire, there’s little reason to grind for anything else – thus the entire of pve becomes redundant, apart from LS updates.

silentnight warrior.2714:

Actually mesmer have very good condition clears. They just dont use the skills / traits they have with that in mind in the meta builds.

The problem is if you trait for and take several Condi cleanse skills (ie menders purity, cleansing conflag, mantra of recovery, restorative mantras, mantra of resolve, null field/AT/idisenchanter, shattered conditions, etc…), firstly your personal survival is not helped enough to justify traiting and taking all these skills together, and secondly your deadliness in combat is severely reduced. Yes so you can pop off loads of Condi cleanses – but you’ll likely hit like a wet noodle and still be susceptible to damage because of leaving out other important survival skills or traits.

Shadelang.3012:

Haha gotta share a really short story. Few days ago I entered a match on my longbow ranger and ended up on skyham. I was running up to b when I saw a warrior rushing our homepoint. I fired off a random knockback shot hoping to put him in combat and slow him long enough for our homeguard to get the cap. Lo and behold read the wind+eagle eye saved the day. He started to do the GS whirling movement ability just as the arrow hit and he goes FLYING off the edge. Half of hte players at B that saw it stopped fighting long enough to type. “uhhh…WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?!”

I wish you had a video of this! xD

I’ll answer one part of your post seriously – yes passive play needs to be toned down, bugs need to be fixed and active play needs to be buffed/supported.

Now for the rest of your post – 6/6/6/6/6 with four weapon sets sounds about right. This Mesmer can also portal across dimenstions, for example direct from stonemist to stonegaze spire, and is able to fly on an illusionary broomstick across all zones in Tyria. It can summon 3 phantasms instantly, each equivalent to a champion npc, and an army of clones that rival most zergs, each of which explodes when breathed on proccing bleed/confusion/burning/torment/chill/poison/weakness/vulnerability and blind on all targets in 1200 radius.
I heard these mesmers were trained by Queen Jennah herself.

I have to say, kitten no way to it being a projectile. Absolutely no way. Do not want to see mirror blade v2.0 either.

Either give the clone a different leap – ie Monarch’s Leap with reduced range, or reverse the skill to work like feigned surge, infiltrators strike or leap from beta.

In any case I prefer it that the clone leaps first as it is now – but for goodness sake needs to use a completely different leap mechanic, maybe even a direct blink with some kind of delay/telegraph after spawning.

Can you recall from the buff bar which mantras they were running?

Seems a bit weird – a PU build should kitten all over any pure mantra build, especially in a 1v1.

If they really want to try and salvage this map (hey, at least the jump pads are fun), then there’s two things that would help:
1. The left and right glass plates at points A and C really have to go. Cheesiest deaths happen here more than anywhere else on the map. Replace with solid floor or something.
2. Reduce hammer radius, damage and increase cooldown. In a map where positioning is life or death, having the kittening hammer cover the radius it does, being unevadeable, is just a joke. Worse when you have a bunker petting zoo in control of it. Maybe they should try disabling the hammer completely and see how things play out.

I know that’s barely scratching the surface, but it would be better than no changes at all.

I suppose we were overdue for the weekly/monthly moa thread.

The easiest way to understand the multitude of answers to the title is for any non-mesmer:
- play mesmer in any game mode, using any build you like except PU – that trait will blind you like fools gold so it’s not allowed. You can still go 6 in chaos if you like, but must pick another trait.
- report your findings of personal experience playing mesmer in all the different game modes – pvp, wvw (both large groups and small scale) and pve. Builds used, and situations faced.

Bonus points for
- not using staff or greatsword
- using focus as one offhand
- not using speed boost runes
- using mantra builds in pvp or wvw
- using phantasm builds in large scale fights
- using shatter builds in a dungeon
- fighting skilled thieves, warriors, eles, engis, guardians, necros, and even very good rangers!
- probably some more bonus points, but I can’t pull any more off the top of my head!

For anyone wanting hardcore mode, try playing Sword+Focus and Scepter+Pistol 4/4/0/0/6, 2/6/0/0/6, 2/4/2/0/6 or 2/4/0/2/6 full zerker shatter in pvp and wvw, then come back and give your opinions. Use of staff or greatsword not allowed for hardcore mode. :p

For anyone wanting super hardcore mode, there’s a variety of interrupt and lockdown builds that might tickle your fancy!

Anyone feel free to say if there’s more to add – I can’t think of everything in one moment!

Also inb4 you tell me to do the same for another class – because that is beside the point. The question in the title is “why are mesmers moaning?”, not “why are <insert class here> moaning?”, so I’m not the one who has to understand the answer to the question. In any case if you look back through my posts in this thread you’ll see I’m very much in favour of ranger buffs for one!

Oh all the time.

Especially because I’m still using sword and torch – it’s like playing with a permanent handicap, nevermind blink bugging out and so on.

The minimal Condi cleanse is also a challenge – one of the reasons I carry a dedicated melandru zerker armour set, for when traveler runes aren’t necessary.

It’s a struggle every time I play – for example one fight in hotjoin with an engi yesterday, first blink failed, then ileap – cue knockdown and immobliise, have to burn MoR charge and decoy to move… total downhill battle from there being several skills down and no opportunity to recover. This actually happened twice in different ways with the same engi – because both blink and ileap failing spectacularly (ie the positioning and timing was crucial), which did cause me to rq because I knew if things had worked properly I had a kitten good chance of beating them both times. :/ I don’t rq often, but on that occasion the skill failures properly kittened me off.

But anyway mostly I take it as a good challenge – knowing I have to put twice as much effort in as the next class/build.
Was in a really masochistic mood last night in hotjoins – several matches in a row I went in with the weaker team which also happened to be 4v5 against us, with several good players stacked on the other side – basically no chance of winning the conquest, so I set myself little side challenges of taking on different opponents, or seeing how long I could troll point bunkers or last when outnumbered on and around point.

Lately I have been struggling with good guardians – ileap clones die instantly, leaving me with prestige, BF and auto attacks on the defensive weapon set. But with any class – relative to what build I’m facing I try to be better than what the expected outcome should be – even if it doesn’t mean killing them.

I’ll content myself with the fact that I’m having to achieve higher skill to be successful on one of our hardest builds with broken weapons – so when the buffs finally come I will be several steps ahead of my opponents.

Edit: The thing about why I continue to play shatter now is – I didn’t do the thing when first playing the game of “oh, lets just copy the build in that video because I want to be cool and faceroll” – I have arrived at this build through personal tweaking and discovery, right from the get go. As new weapons/skills/traits are added and changed, I’ll likely continue to evolve – but I suppose it’s just one of those things with my personality – for me in any form of rpg with class customisation it is about finding my niche, as you say. I have a very particular vision for how I like to play and I am not the sort of person who can play multiple builds at the same time, or who enjoys having many alts. I prefer refining one character into the ideal playstyle that best suits my personality.

Blimey I never thought I’d see the day – warriors and thieves epic QQ battle of who is weaker. xD

I’m confused because from my layman’s perspective, if Monarch’s Leap exists – why can’t the clone be given exactly the same leap?

At the moment, if iLeap isn’t the cause of death, then blink is. Either of them is guaranteed to kitten up at some point during a fight.

It is kittening annoying.

Not one fight goes by where I don’t get completely kittened off with it at some point during the fight. It’s pretty challenging to play with at the moment.

What? I found it laughably easy on my mesmer – even playing shatter.

Kiting with greatsword, avoiding the orbs and backing off to kill the buffer when it spawns – which is also good for a breather because nothing attacks you back in that hallway. The most deadly thing are those orbs, but they can be dodged or avoided in some fashion.

Actually I found it quite enjoyable – easy but enjoyable nonetheless.

Edit: To clarify – I enjoy this kind of pve encounter, because even the statue’s hp wasn’t stupidly high like they make them in dungeons… I really hate bullet sponges, but in this instance everything’s hp was manageable.

Edit 2: As others have said – the key is to back off into the previous hallway to kill the buffer, then come back to chip away at the statue – from range if you like. Sure it takes a little longer, but it is safer and easier than trying to dps down the statue without moving.

Nkuvu.2570:

<snip>

Taimi’s gold dust in my book – both the VA and dialogue are just great.

I wouldn’t care if she told my character to go and dance a jig at the Summit, I’d happily comply with anything short of deleting my account! :p

Fully agree. I can honestly say that interaction with Taimi is a highlight any time it happens. I still laugh out loud with episode 2 dialogue:

Braham: You did great, Taimi.
Taimi: I know.
Kasmeer: What is this place?
Taimi: It’s a caaaave.

My god, I love that dialogue – the way she says it is just fantastic!

A place where you can play in your own time and quit when you’ve had enough – no waiting, no dishonoured, no worry about win or loss (you can still go for it of course), no ranks, no leaderboard, no pressure, no monetary loss on food or consumables.

Get in, do whatever you like – try and help a weaker team to victory, spend the entire match duelling in a corner, try out or run into weird builds.

A place to bypass most conquest bullkitten. It always makes me laugh when players start getting worked up in chat about cap points and rotations in hotjoin – at the end of the day the only thing that matters is you had fun during the match – whether fighting some good players or whatever. Winning or losing conquest really isn’t that important in hotjoin, because the only penalty for losing is a few less rank points.

The only problem since 8v8 was removed is unbalanced teams – spectator mode and free team switching. This is the biggest problem with hotjoin, often turning a match into a boring one sided landslide. I hope this problem can be sorted soon, so that it can resume being the fun casual pvp mode it should be. Let “pro conquest players” keep to their arenas.

TyPin.9860:

Cool, I just had a run of several hotjoin games, trying out dhuum fire necro (didn’t like it, went back to terrormancer). It was an amazing experience. All players were fair, no one changed sides, ppl were friendly and exchanged tips on how to do stuff. The last game I was in was a super close match with 500 to 480 ot smth like that. It was awesome.

That clearly shows to me that even with this flawed hotjoin system it can still be fun, if not everyone is greedy for glory points… I hope I’ll have more of those kinda games.

Thx to the “always” invissible Mesmer, the S/D thief I never could hurt even remotely, the ranger who always pushed me back in the worst moments, the thief, who avenged his own death by slaughtering me like a pig and all the others. Sry, I forgot your names

And yes, as shocking as it sounds, even in hotjoin you do occasionally get some good fun matches like this.

I’ve just gone in a straight line rather than a cycle.

Wall of text incoming… ;D

Initially as a noob I liked the idea of getting people to kill themselves – however having never played GW1 it took me a long time to understand how boons and conditions worked. For example the difference between reflection and retaliation, and how confusion works.

After messing around with different skills and traits, the first build I was happy with playing was glamour confusion, because as a noob I found it the easiest way of making people kill themselves, and also because the targeting system was completely alien to me – having never played an mmo before, and coming from a history of games with crosshairs, it took me a long time to get used to camera and targeting (and I still don’t like it very much). Really easy to just plonk down glamours and use staff + scepter/torch, than trying to play melee and use the targeting system correctly.

Also I was playing a ton of mass effect 3 multiplayer at the time, taking long breaks from gw2 because tbh that was more enjoyable – however there’s like 3 skills per character over there, so again getting used to the number of different things you need to look at on screen and do in gw2 took me a long time.

Anyway, stayed with glamour confusion for quite some time, slowly learning all the class mechanics – moved on to more melee focused builds – a bit of phantasm (I didn’t like the playstyle, so gave up on that quickly), trying out different weapon sets and skills, clone death builds, then moved on to stealth and using PU (mostly inspired from Seven Mirror’s playstyle).

Really liked the PU playstyle – felt very “mesmery” and deceptive – played around with different weapon sets and traits, although almost always with a power focus – never liked playing it with condition damage.
At first I tried to play with “slow” dps, but the more I played the more I liked the idea of bursting from stealth, or using stealth to confuse together with burst damage.

And then they made that final inane boon buff to PU…

Anyway, I continued with it for a while – drifted away from the game for months for different reasons – came back to it to find every man/woman and their pet is playing some form of PU…

Ok well I had begun to work in shatter traits and damage into the PU build I was using, because I wanted to do damage myself – this has always been the reason why I never liked phantasm builds, because I want to do the damage from my character, not from an AI summon. So the only use of illusions I found that would fulfill that purpose was as fuel for mind wrack.

Eventually I decided to switch from PU to IP, because I found I was relying less and less on the survivability and wanted more burst damage. I had dabbled around in shatter several times in the past, but never found myself enjoying the playstyle much – maybe because at the time it was all about emphasising the size of your… crit.

I wanted to make something elegant but with huge burst damage potential – so moved to using staff + sword/torch shatter. Really loved this playstyle – the stealth and misdirection coupled with heavy burst. However after a while I found that weapon set to be lacking in the ability to chase and control opponents. I love sword+torch too much to give it up, so reluctantly swapped staff for greatsword. I’ll be honest – before this I had never liked using the greatsword in any form of pvp – it just felt too awkward to use. But now I can’t put it down, it’s just so fun to play.

In addition to this, over the months I worked on slowly reducing toughness/vitality for more offensive stats, and have finally reached the comfortable feeling with almost full glass.

I will not put down sword torch for these puny little bugs – I will only relinquish that weapon set if they start deleting entire skills from it! :p

I honestly can’t see myself going backwards at the moment – the only thing that might make me change build is some completely new skills and traits, or making glamour/confusion viable again.

Taimi’s gold dust in my book – both the VA and dialogue are just great.

I wouldn’t care if she told my character to go and dance a jig at the Summit, I’d happily comply with anything short of deleting my account! :p

Funny – I’m looking forward to seeing him again.

One of those characters you just find so boring, dull and wooden (excuse the pun), but miss them if they’re gone.

iSwordsman will be broken.

Too many trait and weapon interactions to even consider the possibility of having access to other profession’s utilities.

While it sounds a good idea, and to be honest any new skills to use for a profession would be welcome because they’re a bit stale right now, there are just too many deadly combos that can arise from shared utilities. I don’t think a list of them is necessary.

Veruah.5302:

Oh oh oh!

But if it hits the Mesmer is increases chances of iLeap and Blink actually working!

All hail the new Sw/T meta!

That’s it! RNG buff on allies that makes broken skills work and a debuff on enemies that makes working skills break! xD

Ok really weird thing happened today – was stomping an engi, distortion on cooldown so I thought great opportunity to test Diversion for the sake of it.

2 clones up, mid stomp – engi prepares to use his interrupt – I hit Diversion – as expected does not prevent him from getting the interrupt off – interrupted me mid stomp – however a moment later it is a successful stomp. No discernable lag that I could see, so no idea what happened.

If I recall correctly a similar thing happened a few matches before that, although I can’t remember the exact situation or who I was stomping. Assuming it must be lag related or something, although can’t see why it would happen.

Advent.6193:

Phantasmal Nerf.
“Honest, bro – I’m just a … bugfix. Yeah, that’s it.”

I’ve just had a great idea for iMage!

The bouncing attack causes an RNG debuff on enemy players hit – while under this debuff any skills used have a random chance of failing to function.

:p