Guild Wars 2

I’m glad I cba to level a new character – the current system, while definitely more integrated with the world than the previous system, looks incredibly painful and tedious to go through.

Acrisor.8097:

Players just can’t stop complaining and whining. Ever since the game release (about 2 years ago) they always and always complain. Because of those complains the game gets modified, then other people complain again and the game gets modified again, and again, and again, and again, and again.

We got to the point where everyone wants 1v1 instead of teamwork (hence new map), conditions do not matter that much, teamwork combos are useful only in World Versus World, and everyone look for automated builds with multiple pets and turrets.

Seriously, stop… just stop and think this is a tactical teamwork game created for entertainment, not to consume it’s content fast by pressing 123 and move on to other content. If you don’t enjoy this game, then just leave it, just find some other form of entertainment, because time is one of the most important things in everyone’s life.

Just think for a moment: waiting for something to happen here or waiting for your wishes to be implemented in the game will not make you happier, because of the time consumed so far.

Everything is allowed, but not everything is useful to me, or you.

What has all that got to do with pirate runes? Don’t make such a blanket generalisation about complaints.

I stand by my statement that the only player summoned ai in a pvp mode should be profession based.

^Yeah, I like that solution as well.

Spectator mode is a good thing – sometimes there are great players and its good to watch them the following match to learn something – even in hotjoin.

The real problem is allowing players to switch teams:
- you should not be able to go into spectator mode once the match has begun – either spectate from the start or play from the start. Spectator mode and swap team should be locked once the match starts.
- players joining after start should be forced to the losing team or team with fewest numbers.

There is enough profession based ai floating around and cluttering up the screen – I believe that any additional ai, whether from runes or sigils or whatever, has no place whatsoever in a pvp environment.

Build diversity is one thing – having unnecessary npcs in a pvp mode is not the same issue.

I hate conditions => I almost always use either -28% or -36% condi duration, depending on situation.

I love the sound of the dying parrot – something very satisfying about hearing that feathery fiend squawk out its final death cry.

(Sounds horrible I know – I like birds irl, honest!)

a t s e.9614:

You can complete the map in less than 3 days. I used a full zerker sword/horn + GS warrior. You run across the map in 5 secs and kill everything in 5 secs.

Honestly completing the map is much faster than it looks like. It is boring as kitten but not that bad.

3 days?!? Is that 3 days solid – 18 hours a day?

Took me a month of semi-casual, semi-focused play IIRC.

I thought this looked familiar…

Funny how relevant it is right now.

Darnis.4056:

<snip>

200 Gold is not that much for 5 people.

Why not charge players a 40 Gold every couple of weeks to maintain solo and team queue servers… after all, it’s not a lot of money.

That is a silly expectation – fine, complain that you don’t like duelling because “the game is not balanced around 1v1”, but don’t expect players to have to pay for such a feature.

And regarding that overused statement – life is not balanced around 1v1 as everyone’s different – doesn’t mean we still can’t compete 1v1 in a chosen activity.

Quincy.2198:

This would be great. I nearly have everything ready for my legendary, just that map comp… Not sure if I will ever make it

Map completion was the single most boring thing I have ever done in this game.

Don’t get me wrong – strolling around and enjoying the excellent work of art that is the pve map is great – running around to uncover every waypoint/vista/heart/poi is mind numbingly tedious.

Confusion has already been nerfed big time, and glamours with it.

The only legitimate thing that can do with a nerf is the boon quantity and duration provided by PU.

Good necro.

Custom servers are unfortunately not good enough for this feature, because 1. They have to be paid for and 2. There is a restriction in number of players able to participate (waiting).

Ideally it should be possible to invite/accept anywhere in the mists or in tyria, just as you do with npcs in pve. The one key difference is duelling should be instanced – either:
1 – invisible from other players on the map, or
2 – ghostly silhouettes of the duelists, unable to interact (ie, damage) other players while in the duel, but can still be spectated by passers by.

As said, this will provide an excellent way to “pass time” while waiting to do other things, and bring a lot of life back into the game.

There should be the option to party invite, up to 5 players a side (so 2v2, 3v3 and so on).

To accommodate players who do not like this feature:
1 – include autodecline and block feature in the options menu. They will never see a duel invite.
2 – include a “hide duels” option, so players can choose to never be able to see the instanced duels (otherwise would see ghostly sillhouettes of the players fighting). Good for people who don’t want the visual clutter when in a city.
3 – restrict duels to city based arenas (one in each major city for example). Still instanced so no limit on waiting in a queue for other players to finish, but not cluttering up other areas of the map.

As for verbal abuse from other players – I don’t see why this should be any different to the rest of the game – block /report/ignore and move on. To be honest there is more verbal insulting from pve players in events than between pvp players.

I hope this is made possible in the future, and strongly believe it is a higher priority than the living story, because it would add a permanent additional string to the bow and possibly encourage players to return to the game. The only thing I believe has a higher priority is class bug fixes and balance.

Just because you’ve always pressed 3->3 without delay shows you most likely haven’t fought other players to high level yet. I don’t mean that as an insult, merely making a statement.

Yes 3->3 “works” against a large portion of the playerbase that you run into in wvw, because there’s a lot of upleveled and weaker players out there, but you fight a good warrior/thief/ele or any class to be honest using sw/x shatter and you will get wrecked without proper timing and use of swap, which is now no longer possible.

Edit: Getting wrecked is slightly exaggerating – of course with enough skill you can still do well in a fight with any class, but have to play flawlessly as now sw/x shatter mesmer requires by far the most skill and effort relative to every other class.

Delayed swap in pvp also allowed you to kite effectively in the smaller maps, luring other players into bad position and swapping back to superior position using terrain. Now you have to pray that the clone survives more that one second.

Here’s a thought – make all NPC summon runes/sigils pve only.

Only npcs/ai remaining in pvp are profession based summons (pets/clones/minions/etc).

medohgeuh.4650:

So do you people have anything to say other than “ur bad lol” just because I disagree since I’ve played everything but sPvP without ever noticing you could do this?

That 5s difference between leap and (guaranteed) swap allowed for many creative plays in pvp, either the difference between life/death, superior positioning/kiting, or a guaranteed kill.

Now you’re encouraged to simply press 3→3 before the clone dies, which for a skill as blatantly telegraphed as ileap renders it almost completely useless, other than spawning a clone to shatter.

Pretty much agree with everything you’ve said, although I wouldn’t isolate and pick on the thief build on its own – might stacking, certain runes (strength/pirate) and fire/air/battle sigils are well over the top and also affect other class builds.

I’m not sure what the best solution is though, short of heavily nerfing might, shaving the celestial amulet, and giving those two sigils shared cooldown or something.

I would vote for you.

@blitzkrieg – I was going to reply but I see others have done it for me.

Taking shatter exclusively, “Good” at the moment => GS+Staff.

I would like to know of any mesmer using Sw/x shatter who is feeling perfectly fine right now.

GS/staff mesmers (who were already better than Sw/x before the patch) are unaffected so have little reason to complain.

That’s doesn’t foster good build variety or player experimentation.

Jurica.1742:

You can pick 5 from NA and 5 from EU

Yeah, 4 each + helseth/supcutie.

Jurica.1742:

You don’t have to pick the other 4. You can just vote for 1 if you like. I did that myself as I didn’t know anyone from NA other than Sup.

I picked the other mesmer for EU (sincere apologies I can’t remember the name), among others. Felt wrong to only pick two names so I chose 4 others with interesting statements – playing unique/unconventional builds or styles.

Done.

Had a hard time choosing 4 others for NA, not being familiar with the names – just had to pick a bit at random!

@blitzkrieg – I’m confused – if you’re not bothered at the state of the class at the moment, then why go to all the effort of arguing with pretty much everyone in this forum about it – rather than let complainers complain and you just get on and play?

Seems you’re more bothered about people complaining than they are about the state of the class.

Osho Rajneesh? I used to listen to his cassettes as a child (family was interested in that sort of thing) – music ones in particular.

Looking back I’d say he was an ok guy, although put on too high a pedestal for things which are becoming more widely accepted among people.

But that quote is quite appropriate in here!

Menaka.5092:

Curunen.8729:

Blinding befuddlement nerf was completely unnecessary – totally agree right there. Confusion damage reduction was sufficient; they should just revert the blinding befuddlement nerf entirely.

Blurred frenzy on the other hand… well I have to say it was too powerful having 2s invuln on 8-10s cooldown. The problem isn’t invuln-evade, the problem is retaliation needs a complete rework because the current mechanics are brainless.

They also increased the cooldown on BF.

Yeah this was kind of unnecessary to do both things to it. Changing the invuln should have been sufficient (ignoring retal problems).

Jackums.3496:

Curunen.8729:

Cooldown must be reduced in its current form.

40s base is a joke – should be at most 30s base.

40s base is more likely if the number of boons and conditions transferred is increased, because Master of Manipulation would decrease that to 32 seconds.

30s base cooldown would never happen, because that would allow a 24s CD with Master of Manipulation, which would make it incredibly powerful (slightly less cleanse than Mantra of Resolve, with the added offense/utility of boon stealing).

Though assuming the number of boons/conditions isn’t altered, then the base cooldown definitely needs at least 10 seconds shaved off.

As for more drastic changes that alter the mechanics (ie. AoE transfer); I find the chances of that happening less likely, with ANet’s whole “small, incremental buffs” philosophy.

Facepalm – my mistake, for some reason I thought AT was 40s base cooldown instead of 45! xD

In that case 35s would be suitable (down to 28s traited).

One thing to note is that anyone speccing for master of manipulation will likely not have shattered concentration – so there would be limited boon strip in addition with 28s AT compared to base cooldown.

I have noticed a difference stepping down to the -28%, although not game breaking so I’m coping with it for now.

Will likely step back up to -36% once I’ve built up a decent reserve of gold again (I’m very low on coin at the moment).

Cooldown must be reduced in its current form.

40s base is a joke – should be at most 30s base.

I think it’s fair that it was nerfed from swapping all boons/conditions to only 3, but the cooldown should now be low enough to allow more frequent use – especially given the amount of conditions flying around.

AoE would be nice, but tbh I’d like to see a branching skill option for cooldown, number of conditions and AoE – so you have to choose how you want to customise the skill (single target many condis/boons, high cooldown or multi target, few condi/boons and lower cooldown, for example). But this is a general thing I want to see in the game anyway, although not likely to occur for several years if it indeed does happen…

Does anyone use these in their builds?

Is the -28% condi duration worth ~ 4 – 5s compared to -36% at >15s?

Is the 30% endurance regen and 80% might on dodge worth ~ 2s compared to 40% and 100% at ~11s?

Just curious to see if they are worth using – the disgusting price of lemongrass and now even leek/poultry is forcing me to look at other options – I do not want to have to farm to earn back enough coin simply to be able to afford more consumables (exaggeration, but the point stands – you need to earn back at least 20s/30mins to cover both consumables if using leek/poultry, which can restrict freedom in play)…

Any other foods where you lot are making compromises based on price?

Yes, as discussed in a previous thread, reducing BF hits and buffing damage would help, if retaliation is left alone.

Both sword #2 and #3 need something for sure.

Not a dumb question at all – you know fashion is the most important topic in the mesmer community!

Blinding befuddlement nerf was completely unnecessary – totally agree right there. Confusion damage reduction was sufficient; they should just revert the blinding befuddlement nerf entirely.

Blurred frenzy on the other hand… well I have to say it was too powerful having 2s invuln on 8-10s cooldown. The problem isn’t invuln-evade, the problem is retaliation needs a complete rework because the current mechanics are brainless.

Sors Immani.8429:

@Lishtenbird As far as I know of. If not, then I’m either due a fat check or an obscene amount of gems

@Curunen I understand what you’re saying. As for targeting, I usually try to observe the buff bar, but with buffs being applied to clones as well as players, it’s still fairly difficult unless the player’s dumb enough to enter pvp with a bday or MF boost active. The fact that I’m no good as a mesmer still remains though.

I’m no good playing as thief, doesn’t matter.

It’s more than the buff bar – you just know instinctively which one to target – how they move, position relative to clones, skill use. Playing as one of course helps because you get used to the mindset and tells. Not saying you always get it right – sometimes it can be a bit messy. But most of the time it should be ok. Maybe just persevere and eventually it’ll click?

Yeah there’s much better options than GS cooldown – boon strip, halting strike, torch condi clear, blade training and 1200 blink together, mender’s purity, manipulation cooldown, fall damage reduction…

GS#2 and #4 are already low enough with icelerity, #3 doesn’t need to be lower and #1 is untouched. Only great benefit is iwave but 25s is still too long to make that much of a difference compared to 30s.

Practice tbh.

Should spot the correct target almost all the time in a small scale fight. Some will be clever and try to act like a clone but still easy to spot once they move a bit (if it isn’t already obvious from their buff bar). Then be able to retarget the correct mesmer within a second or two of button pressing.

It’s annoying when you are say 2v4 with other enemy clutter around (pets etc) – do the best job to focus fire on one target.

Regarding stealths – be aware of all the cooldowns and whether skills have been used (decoy, veil, prestige, MI) – yes good players will time these skills very well, but take advantage of windows of opportunity between cooldowns. Same applies for all the other defensive skills (blurred frenzy, blocks, distortions, also dazes/interrupts) – pull out the cooldowns and time the attacks.

Personally I like high burst damage to hit in those windows of opportunity, but condition burst or tons of mobility impairing effects (ie immobilise/stuns/dazes) are great counters.

I feel blessed – I never learnt how to play thief vs other players (beyond stupid specs – ie quad pistols with clerics…) to any high standard so don’t know what I’m missing! ;D

Not going to join the dark side now in any case!

I don’t like it at all tbh.

90s is too long – could be 60s instead.

Cast time is also awkward.

ASP.8093:

Swag Captain.5318:

…Spelling kitten taking over.. must.. warn.. that it’s spelled “Defense”

It’s spelled “defense” in American English, “defence” in British English. But “defensive” in both.

Same with offence.

Anyway on the topic – first I saw the power was low and thought, ok nevermind he must have gone heavily into condition – but then I see condition damage is also <1000?

Would like to see how you kill a bunker guardian or warrior with this build.

All I can see is the potential to kite enemies towards your allies/zerg and be an annoying kitten – but can’t kill anything other than upleveled glass cannons by yourself.

Fair play if you enjoy it, but I’ll be honest I can’t see much good – far too defensive.

Well anyway, in the immortal words of Seven Mirror…

Eye Two.1538:

Beta and release a little different skill .. You can see the skill beta that changed before release. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9V6Ckj6--Z0

Wouldn’t mind ditching ileap and replacing it with leap and swap back to your clone.

If they’re so worried about swap then being an easily accessible stunbreak, they could just do the same as phase retreat and remove the stun break – just keep it as a normal in combat blink.

Carighan.6758:

I don’t mind whether it’s supported, I said that it’s equivalent to intentionally losing. Your primary directive in same-size-teams lineups like tPvP should be to always create situations where you are fighting with more numbers, and prevent the enemy from forcing them in turn.

This goes hand in hand with not giving combat if it would drag out or not be advantageous. If you’re defending a point, a long drawn out fight is usually good, sometimes a quick win is better to be able to move elsewhere. Either way though, ideally you simply overpower the enemy 3-1 and 2-3 of you move off to elsewhere to create similar situations.

The same basically applies in WvW, but presence becomes another factor there. Instead of only fighting with superior numbers, fighting with superior coverage is a very similar application of the idea of never fight fair, but in a different way.

But yes in short, don’t fight fair. Fighting fair is for when losing is an acceptable outcome, and it’s the outcome I want to avoid.

Yes that’s true when it comes to winning pvp conquest match or wvw points.

Often losing conquest is acceptable if it means I have a fantastic 1v1 or 1v2 with skilled fighters. And “losing” wvw is acceptable if it means I have a good time pulling some opponents around.

My perspective is obviously skewed and not in line with what the game dictates as “winning” in conquest or overall in wvw (but lets be honest – how many people care about overall score in wvw, it’s whether you’re victorious in the immediate fight or survive to fight another time), and I’m one of the kittens in favour of deathmatch pvp modes!

Carighan.6758:

Menaka.5092:

Welcome back to the game, I hope you like condi mesmers.
Or you really like staff+gs.
Because that’s pretty much all that you can play right now…

(in 1v1)

(you should not be fighting 1v1, it’s equivalent to intentionally losing)

That’s like saying you should not GvG because it’s not a supported game mode.

I get a lot of fun out of a good straight up 1v1 (or 1/2 v 2/3/4…) – moreso than conquest nonsense or zerg nonsense.

Taking individual skills out of context and comparing with other classes is completely ridiculous anyway.

Spawning the clone in the first place is sometimes hit and miss and requires close range. For the clone to actually leap to the target is very hit and miss. For the clone to survive for any length of time is unlikely. To make use of the situational stun break (nevermind positioning) and blink is a reward for a making use of an already bugged skill.

Pannas.7028:

hey mates you really think that arenanet will do something about ileap? i don’t think so. they didn’t do anything about all the bugs especially for the warden .

They did sort out Distortion pretty quickly, so maybe they can do something with ileap.

Aza.2105:

Warrior strengths and weaknesses:

Strengths:

1. High health pool
2. High armor rating
3. Can deal physical damage or condition damage
4. Versatile choice of weapons

Weakness:

1. No way to remove enemy boons
2. Inferior group support i.e group stability, group condi removal, group stun breaker etc.
3. Heavily reliant on stances for durability. Once they expire the class becomes considerably weaker.
4. No access to protection
5. Minimum access to combo fields

The only imbalance warrior has atm is its ability to disengage almost on par with a thief. According to devs on one of the previous ready ups!, this isn’t particularly part of their class design. They should be as guardian, first to get into battle and last to leave.

I feel warriors are in the hot seat too often, I believe they are strong but not as strong as people make them out to be. A vast majority of their skill kitten nal is self centered, meaning its not the class you want to bring when you want ally support.

I agree with this.

The mobility and disengage ability is the main problem. Warriors should be a “first in last out” kind of class, but for a class with already good damage/defence to be able to engage and disengage from any combat with ease is a little too much.

I say just revert it for the time being.

Change the tooltip to reflect that – “swap 5s: swap places with your clone. If the clone dies, blink to the summoned clone’s last known location.”

I don’t want to see ileap changed, other than the clone’s pathfinding to the target – maybe something like Monarch’s Leap with shorter range. Leave everything else the same.

Ele got better again so I’m hopeful that within 12 months we might be ok with build variety and fixed skills…

…hopefully.

Cheloh.5897:

He got a little cropped off because he is large but this is my mesmer.

I like this.

blitzkrieg.2451:

Curunen.8729:

Shattered concentration and portal – the two pillars keeping mesmer afloat in pvp.

Taking Sw/x plus something (GS or Sc/x for example) – 4/4(0/0/6) requires assistance from the team to survive because 12s BF cooldown means you will get hurt.

2/6 has no great way of busting bunkers, but stands up a little better in solo survival and vs thieves because of 9s BF.

Now ileap is borderline useless, how is this acceptable? Please don’t say roll staff + gs.

I can appreciate its role in “high level” tpvp, but the fact remains this is the only, very specific spec that is made to work by good players – it is standing on a house of cards at the moment.

Shatter mesmer needs buffs in more sustain somehow, mostly condition removal that can synergize well with the standard shatter trait setups because any condition removal you can get traited makes you sacrifice either alot of damage from either spectrum whether its in domination or illusions. PU is fine and phantasm builds are fine aside from the AI bugs of course, but as they stand as tested builds, they’re fine. Any mesmer having issues playing as PU or phantasm AI related build literally just needs to get good, I get it with Shatter mesmer because it is one of the highest risk builds you can run in this game at the moment, but it works when played right but still needs condi removal sustain but keeping it’s dmg / boon stripping utility (it is a team spec, not a 1on1 spec after all).

I was specifically talking about shatter – PU is of course fine and phantasm fine in its limited use scenario (ie not group fights).

Yes as a side note it would be nice to have some condition removal that synergises well with the usual shatter trait setup, instead of either taking nothing or being forced to give up one of the holy trinity of utilities (blink, decoy, portal (veil for wvw)).

Now with ileap like this, the only decent pvp team friendly shatter is to be pigeonholed into gs + staff and 4/4 with shattered concentration. There is little choice in the matter.

If portal did not exist and (now this is just hypothetical – I am in no way in favour of removing boon strip!) shattered concetration did not either, then mesmer would be completely kittened.

Remove veil also in wvw and it is noticeable how little a mesmer brings to the table.

While this could be currently “acceptable” in that at least we have one way of playing the game, the principle of it is not right and the lack of build variety is also not right.

Shattered concentration and portal – the two pillars keeping mesmer afloat in pvp.

Taking Sw/x plus something (GS or Sc/x for example) – 4/4(0/0/6) requires assistance from the team to survive because 12s BF cooldown means you will get hurt.

2/6 has no great way of busting bunkers, but stands up a little better in solo survival and vs thieves because of 9s BF.

Now ileap is borderline useless, how is this acceptable? Please don’t say roll staff + gs.

I can appreciate its role in “high level” tpvp, but the fact remains this is the only, very specific spec that is made to work by good players – it is standing on a house of cards at the moment.