Guild Wars 2

Iavra.8510:

Interrupting the downed enemy somehow never works for me…

Another way would be any signet + that invul trait.

Any stealth + PU can work, if it procs Aegis, same for Chaos Storm, but is unreliable.

Requires pinpoint timing and sometimes a bit of luck. I know ele mistform can’t be interrupted – never bother stomping before they’ve ported unless using quickness or long duration stealth or something (EDIT: unless you’re feeling incredibly lucky to land a blink stomp on their vapour form), but I’m pretty sure all the rest of the #2 can be, even thief/mes ports – unless I have been grossly misled and the total number of thieves and mesmers that have simply not bothered to use #2 while I’m stomping is much much higher than I thought it to be.

But the switch target, Diversion on second enemy performing the res is invaluable.

You missed portal.

Also Diversion – either to interrupt downed enemy, or more importantly if someone is rezzing the downed enemy you can quickly switch target while stomping and use Diversion to interrupt the res. This has secured me a stomp on many occasions.
Edit: This kind of requires IP to to work best.

It’s the fine line between action TPS/RPG, and more classic mmo group combat.

I prefer the former – I wouldn’t even bother playing GW2 if it wasn’t for the ability to dodge and execute skills on the run. Tab targeting is already enough of an archaic hindrance.

1v1, 2v2, 3v3 for me is far more entertaining and dynamic than anything larger, either in pve or wvw, and I prefer fighting “player sized” enemies in pve (with corresponding health pools) – it is a shame they are not smart enough like enemy AI in third person shooters/action games.

This is why I have a problem with stacking – because it doesn’t encourage new development in pve enemy behaviour, and doesn’t encourage dynamic combat in large scale pvp.

GS + Sw/F?

GS + Staff?

- 1200 blink
- PU is actually useful for stealth capping skill points in annoying locations.

I’d go 4/4/6, GS cooldown, Phantasm buffing traits, bountiful interruption and PU. Should be easy to map complete with that.

Edit:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fhAQNAR8dlknpMtFpxRNcrNSqRY671XSOEUytPA-w

Can swap MoR for veil, portal, mimic or whatever you need at the time.

^Can I have some of whatever you just drank/smoked/injected/snorted?

Agreed 100%.

This is the reason I don’t like dungeons or any group PvE content, large scale wvw group fights, or even pvp group fights, if you’ve got 3 players or more on point.

Especially dungeons – stacking justifies the stupidly high hit points of pve mobs (I really hate pve mob health bars) which in turn forces people to stack in order to beat the dungeon.

Kind of puts me off most content in the game that isn’t solo roaming/small scale fights.

Too much mindless group buffs, aoe and stacking – needs to be some kind of disadvantage.

I can understand that you can’t have player models obstructing each other, because that will lead to all kinds of abuse/exploits, so having unlimited number of players standing in the same physical space will have to remain the same.
But maybe have some debuffs when 3 or more players are within 120 units of each other (or even smaller radius) – for example boons tick faster, take 10% more damage, deal 10% less damage, etc.

I think to simplify this idea a lot could allow the possibility of something good being introduced, not only for Mesmer, but for all classes.

If I could state the bare minimum that should both allow for better build synergy and also work within the current game balance:

1. Class mechanic skills remain bound to illusions as a resource.

2. Two sets of class mechanic skills
- four shatters, as we have now
- four illusion buffing skills (for builds focused on not shattering)

3. All weapon and utility skills remain the same.

That would be a start and should also be practical, rather than redesigning the entire class – which may not be possible for years, if ever.

For large group fights, the simplest thing would be to buff glamours again.

Anyway, not trying to dismiss the incredible amount of thought and effort put into the OP, because I think it is fantastic. However judging by class changes over the last two years, it is more practical/realistic to introduce one or two base change ideas and go from there, step by step.
:)

Good write up and suggestions.

I can’t give too much detailed opinion right now – posting from phone.

While I do agree with customisable profession mechanic (all classes should have their own customisation), I’m not sure for direct damage shatter builds that the method of illusion summoning is fluid enough in your model.

I think while you have fantastic ideas on restructuring the class mechanic, you haven’t expands these idea to weapons as well. Meaning you should also be able to choose which weapon skills you want – whether to have clone summoning skills on weapons, phantasm skills, or even traited illusion summons (ie, deceptive evasion). I think all players should have the choice between:
- illusion or non-illusion focused class mechanic
- illusion or non-illusion focused weapon skills

Yes this implies the need for alternate, swappable #1 to #5 skills.

Anyway, to briefly sum up – I think it’s a great idea, definitely needs refinement and perhaps reduction in scope (concentrate on the few core builds being catered to before adding half a dozen new mechanics -ie facades).

Nice to have new management and a new overlord. It will be an honour to be killed by you. ;D

(time to bring out all the reflects and reflect all the things)

Greatsword – auto attack – go afk and make yourself a cup of tea.

(throw some izerkers and mind wracks in there if you can be bothered)

ASP.8093:

Well, if nothing else, you’ll get to have some fun reflecting Rapid Fire. :P

Going to run Mirror just for that!

The next patch could be the one we’re looking for…

…maybe.

I have no expectations.

Will be nice that SotH doesn’t need to be traited for the juicy extra damage – especially for maul.

Lol at warrior complaining about ranger buffs.

Looks kitten good tbh.

Greatsword buffs are nice – hands down my favourite ranger weapon. Might have to recreate my ranger to try these things out.

I’ve never used mantra of concentration.

Looks like a decent stunbreak, but never felt the urge to use it.

RyuDragnier.9476:

maha.7902:

RyuDragnier.9476:

maha.7902:

Mesmer OP?

Do you realise that mesmers are literally trash tier in every single game mode?

WvW. Your argument is now invalid.

Drop veil then… do nothing? This is like saying rangers are good because healing spring.

Yes, because it’s not like having a single utility skill prevents usefulness in WvW…OH WAIT IT DOESN’T. Mesmers are the reason why you have people on defense in keeps and towers and why they’re constantly sweeping, a single mesmer port can cause a tower/keep to flip in a minute. A Mesmer can be considered the single most important class in WvW for this reason.

Portal and veil justify the usefulness of mesmer…

I know – why don’t they simply delete everything in the class and just give us two buttons – one for portal and one for veil. Not like it will make much difference in large scale wvw.

Oh and PU justifies roaming…

And mostly Shattered Concentration plus Portal (and a bit of phase retreat) justify pvp…
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Now for my serious thought – please Anet for the love of Eternal Alchemy, delete Portal and Veil from the game. Then mesmer class balance can be properly addressed.

Well played ele I’d say.

/shrug

Can Kasmeer please go with Marjory as well.

I love skyhammer.

I randomly go around casting Mind Stab (or any of the GS abilities apart from #4) whenever it’s off cooldown, in cities or anywhere, because on an asura the animation is pure bad kitten.

Confession: I’m still playing too much, despite saying I wouldn’t play as much. :/

I think a simple solution that would benefit skyhammer is to make the cannon dodgeable like trebs on khylo – so any form of evade or dodge will avoid being hit by it.

Ok I’m going to stick my neck out here on the block…

As for being pulled/pushed off the edge – I don’t think all the different ways of doing this can be treated in the same way – neither can all the map pull/push locations be treated in the same way. Some do require skill to setup and a certain level of idiocy from your opponent, to force them into a bad position to knock off.

For example standing still on points A and C and getting pulled down the side glass panels is a little cheap. I think something could be done with the angles of the map here.

However using utilities/weapon skills to gain positional advantage for a successful knockback off the edge is not trivial and requires your opponent to move to the wrong position as well. It could involve extra steps – for example first I must strip stability, force them to move in a bad position, maybe burn a couple of utilities to put myself in the right position at the moment they’re in the wrong position, etc.

The cannon is the real problem on this map IMO – not the falling off. Being unable to dodge together with the necessity for maintaining good position on this map makes for a very ugly combo.

tl;dr – Nerf the cannon (ie evadeable), fix/move/remove diagonal glass panels at points A and C. Map is not as bad as made out to be.

If ascended assassin trinkets existed, I’d say no harm in going full zerker because you can mix and match trinkets to get the power/precision balance you want.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

Menaka.5092:

Lianna.6980:

Watching all the others killing the mobs 10x times faster.
Asking yourself: where is my loot?

“let me setup my shatter combo while this warrior mindlessly hacks at the npc…” “aaaaaand it’s gone”

And so are all your clones. The irony.

If only I could breathe on a warrior and have them drop dead…

:D

See I’m having a little difficulty because the ideal build in my mind would be hybrid direct damage/condition damage shatter – 4/4/0/0/6 (taking staff + scepter/pistol or torch).

Stats to focus on would be:
1. Power
2. Condition Damage
3. Precision
4. Ferocity

Unfortunately the trouble is in pvp the correct amulet doesn’t exist, and in pve/wvw the right stat combo doesn’t exist.

The idea would be to play glassy like a normal shatter (ie minimal toughness or vitality), and instead of full zerker, drop power and ferocity down and raise condition damage to roughly 50/50 spread.

But this would require Power/Condition Damage/Precision and Condition Damage/Power/Ferocity or similar gear to work.

Rampagers is useless because you don’t need precision as the major stat…

:/

tl;dr – All condition damage gear has “useless stats” on it – such as vit/tou, or wrong distribution (rampagers) – will not work for glassy hybrid shatter.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

Suffer now, for salvation later – maybe.

Sounds like religion to me.

Repent! And thou shalt be saved! (maybe)

:p

Sagat.3285:

Curunen.8729:

Farzo.8410:

Stealth is getting really old, really fast.

It’s so boring to fight against Thiefs or Mesmers.

What? Boring?

On the contrary – I find it the most fun. Boring is fighting tanky warriors/engi/guard/necro even ele – avoid the bullkitten and keep chipping away at those pve-like health bars.

At least vs thief and mesmer you can take away a significant chunk of hp with one good burst, even if they’re a little tanky. Much more fun to anticipate stealth attacks and time counter bursts, than to bash your head against the aforementioned bunker brick walls.

Anyway, on topic
- raise air sigil ICD to 5s
- give all sigils of the same type shared cooldown
- change sigil of battle to 3 stacks of might for 10 seconds

Therefore – can’t use two of the same type on one weapon – so must be one swap and one crit for example.
Also have choice between high single target proc (air) and medium damage aoe proc (fire).

That would be a decent starting point IMO.

All sigils same CD doesn’t make sense

Air sigil: 3 sec CD single target strike
Fire sigil : 5 sec CD aoe strike

Earth sigil : 2 sec CD single target bleed
Torment sigil : 5 sec CD aoe torment(WWW)

Unless air and earth get buff they should not be the same CD.

I think you’re misunderstanding what I said – unless I’m misinterpreting your reply.

All same type sigils should share ICD as it did in the past. However different type sigils will have separate ICD, which is different from how it was in the past.

What I am suggesting is that sharing cooldown means you equip one single sigil of a single type on one weapon set.

So you can’t put for example generosity + fire because only one will proc and both should go on cooldown. But you can put generosity and battle, each with independant cooldown.

I’m not suggesting they all have the same CD – Earth should still still be 2s, Fire 5s, generosity 9s and so on.

Regarding Air and Fire – because one is single target high damage and the other is multitarget medium damage, I suggested both should have equal ICD – 5 seconds. Air could have a slight damage buff to compensate.

jportell.2197:

Mesmer is OP thread?

./ Popcorn

Indeed.

Good necro should melt most mesmer builds, or at the very least force them to run away and kite.

Prysin.8542:

<snip> Now, necromancers are very strong with conditions, however mesmer is equally good at manipulating/removing them. unfortunately, the necromancer is very bad at repetitive spam. It can land huge condition bombs with ease, and if it has some help, it can spam condi bombs around with epidemic. But on its own, the necromancer is too slow at applying medium-high stacks to apply consistent pressure, and that is what you need.

<snip>

This is not true – mesmers have very poor condition removal and will melt under condition spam, unless traiting for stupid builds that have no damage pressure (ie 6 inspiration, shattered conditions, full mantras with restorative mantras and mender’s purity… then yes, decent condition removal at the expense of pathetic dps).

Could we tally these up in the OP, for an overall picture?

Farzo.8410:

Stealth is getting really old, really fast.

It’s so boring to fight against Thiefs or Mesmers.

What? Boring?

On the contrary – I find it the most fun. Boring is fighting tanky warriors/engi/guard/necro even ele – avoid the bullkitten and keep chipping away at those pve-like health bars.

At least vs thief and mesmer you can take away a significant chunk of hp with one good burst, even if they’re a little tanky. Much more fun to anticipate stealth attacks and time counter bursts, than to bash your head against the aforementioned bunker brick walls.

Anyway, on topic
- raise air sigil ICD to 5s
- give all sigils of the same type shared cooldown
- change sigil of battle to 3 stacks of might for 10 seconds

Therefore – can’t use two of the same type on one weapon – so must be one swap and one crit for example.
Also have choice between high single target proc (air) and medium damage aoe proc (fire).

That would be a decent starting point IMO.

I don’t play condition builds so this might be a bit of a mess!

PvP:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fhAQRArc8alknpMtFpxRNcrNCrBh6rkmfSyEEgSGirB-TJRHwAJLDI4kAA4JAMZ/BA

WvW:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fhAQRArd8alknpMtFpxRNcrNCrBh6rkmfSyEEgSWhrB-TVSHABmouiRKXyd/BWUpQgTCwRKpA4JAgm+hoUCGAABYmlZZWmBm5Mn5Mn5MLFAMzBA-w

Ah, yes I see they’re covered by the prestige.

What about image and idisenchanter cast being interrupted?

What happens if an ele throws a static field in there, or something?

Jerus.4350:

HyruleanHyroe.1473:

I’m all for killing off the lovebirds and saving the other three. Rox and Braham are the only ones who are not a constant Deus Ex Machina, so they don’t feel cheap. Plus, Charr/Norn rom-com, anyone? Taimi is a get-out-of-trouble-free card, and can definitely be obnoxious or a liability sometimes, but is at least a non-generic RPG Hero. She’s uniquely written and should definitely stay. Margarine and Cat-Smear need to be bumped for better characters. I vote for Explorer Smatti, but only because I love her voice actress.

Well, to be fair half of Braham’s dialogue is simply repeating “uh huh” and the other half is “can it bash it with my mace now?”. Kinda easy to not fall into that realm of character when you have nothing to say. Rox is pretty much summed up by “no don’t do that you’ll get hurt, then i’ll have to patch you up”.

But I agree, I much prefer their little to nothing to say than the overly talkative and obvious annoying dialogue of Kas/jory. I HATE Marjory at this point and I was happy to see Belinda die just because it got Marjory out fo the picture, it’s unfortunate she needed to die for that to happen, but thank god we got that dialogue out of the picture for now.

As for personal story voice acting, I really liked the entire personality/dialogue from Magister Sieren I think it was, the priory person. Then Gixx talking to her was just great IMO.

Yeah, Sieran’s dialogue with Gixx is great.

Still possible to go even further downhill. I won’t list anything here because I don’t want to give Anet any bad ideas.

But, also possible to get better from here, so who knows.

For me, sticking with sword+torch shatter now through this difficult patch almost guarantees better skill once ileap, image and possibly blurred frenzy are fixed.

Focus has gone from best to worst tbh. TC not in great place, iWarden kittened at the moment.

Pistol has always been in a good position – requires good play to take advantage of stun and make sure duelist lands its burst. I rate it fairly solid, but it’s too easy to miss or waste magic bullet.

Sword is pretty kitten good, with low cooldown, decent damage on iriposte and good phantasm. However I don’t like it in outnumbered situations – yes the riposte is in line daze, but in practice not easy to hit more than one opponent, and the block is only blocking one single attack – not great if being hammered on by two players with channeled abilities.

Torch, despite having one skill (:p), has the most useful skill now out of all the offhands, and being aoe scales well with outnumbered fights – blind, burn, stealth, blast finisher…

At the moment, unless you’re playing a phantasm build I’d rate:
Torch > Sword > Pistol > Focus

If phantasm build, then Sword or Pistol are best.

Off the top of my head:

Signet of Illusions doesn’t serve much purpose tbh – not going to shatter much here so the reset isn’t important, and the only illusion that is worth buffing for health is the izerker – but the health buff isn’t great anyway. Better off taking blink for mobility and stun break.

Would be better off taking torch trait instead of GS trait, for extra condition removal and PU synergy.

Sigils of accuracy not really necessary – better off taking battle/fire/air/doom. Still do fine with >40% crit chance, especially as not shatterring frequently.

+1 YES.

One single head gear for stats, auto skin change on entering/exiting water. So much simpler.

HyruleanHyroe.1473:

I’m all for killing off the lovebirds and saving the other three. Rox and Braham are the only ones who are not a constant Deus Ex Machina, so they don’t feel cheap. Plus, Charr/Norn rom-com, anyone? Taimi is a get-out-of-trouble-free card, and can definitely be obnoxious or a liability sometimes, but is at least a non-generic RPG Hero. She’s uniquely written and should definitely stay. Margarine and Cat-Smear need to be bumped for better characters. I vote for Explorer Smatti, but only because I love her voice actress.

While I do think Margarine and Miss Universe have evolved into half decent characters, I still find most of their dialoge forced and kind of annoying, and wouldn’t be sorry to see them leave.

Taimi, Rox and Braham are the 3 I want to keep around, no matter what. For all his faults, Braham is still mildly interesting as a character. I would like to add Canach to the group as well.

Taimi is 90% the reason why I enjoy the LS. I love every line of dialogue she comes out with. The VA is fantastic. I doubt I’d enjoy it much otherwise.

I’ll just say the reason I don’t want them to fix iElasticity yet is because staff is already the cornerstone of more popular builds, whereas sword and focus have gone from pole position to last place and so need fixing more desperately than giving staff clones elasticity.

Why not Capricorn as well?

Again, don’t pin this entirely on s/d thieves.

It’s the boons, runes and sigils (this in particular) that need to be looked at one more time – affecting every class, and giving at least several classes and builds too much of an edge.

Carighan.6758:

I still think a better (and global!) fix would be to make all non-skillshot and hence targeted movement skills fail if you lack either of:

• A selected target.
• Range to actually reach that target with the skill.

Do it!

I would so love to see this happen (and the qq that ensues!)

One build, strong in one scenario – purely 1v1 or 1vX fights.

It’s a case of extremes:

- one cheese build (particularly Condi), powerful because of one trait and stealth, mindlessly easy to play in 1v1, 1vX scales with skill.

- all the remaining builds (what few of them remain that haven’t been broken beyond repair) require considerably more skill depending on scenario (ie not 1v1 phantasm in 1v1…), and are often at a disadvantage to other classes in the different game modes.

This is the problem – PU being buffed hurts the class as a whole, because many players can’t see further than it and assume mesmer is very powerful – when in reality all other builds need help/work.

Alissah.9281:

I’ve been so bored lately… I just wish I vould get back to gw2 and do the new things for some free fun.

Too bad the only profession I enjoy is nerfed, then completely ignored by th devs, and then nerfed some more. If it wasnt for the state of the Mesmer Id still have gw2 as my favourite game.

Bad time to come back.

BlackDevil.9268:

Mesmer is a bug, please remove it from the game.

:D

1. iLeap – fix it, replace it, I don’t care.

2. iWarden – fix it.

3. iMage – fix it, replace it, I don’t care.

Honourable mentions:
- Illusions targeting wrong targets – either from DE or skills.
- Blinding Befuddlement – remove the ICD
- Into the Void – change the 1s ICD to 0.5s ICD. There is already a casting animation for Temporal Curtain, so adding the 1s on top of that was too much IMO. Needs to be reduced to 0.5s at the most.
- Blurred Frenzy – 12s cooldown for evade is too long. Revert to 10s base, 8s traited. Needs fewer hits to minimise retal damage.
- Blink – failure rate is too high. Yes it works most of the time, but still, fails too often to move you where you placed the cursor, on terrain where it should work.

Dei Veien.2456:

arg, I remember taking revive orbs with me since I had so many of them at the times. That and when you had to sneak past mass amounts of mobs ( I remember a specific vista in dredge naught cliffs with a particular shudder) they are a …life saver?
But yeah the lack of mobility coupled with horrible damage makes it something that I would recommend doing with at least a few friends.

Dostoev Sky Peak?

Kitten, if this is the one you mean, yes it is hands down the most kittening kitten vista in the entire game. Yes that includes everything in wvw and pve. So. Much. Pain. To get this vista…

I did almost all of it without using a focus and without any other form of speed or mobility boost, other than phase retreat and blink…

…yeah, you can guess how I felt about it.

Tbh though, I was being stubborn, having completed part of it without any speed boost, so I figured I want to do all of it without speed boost. Took kittening ages.