Guild Wars 2

Vyriis.6258:

For those who are only reading the TL:DR I say this again, before commenting that PvE already get’s all of what I’m asking for actually read what my post is saying.

For those of us who only run raids and FotM when we log on we DO NOT go out and farm the season 3 maps. We do NOT get dungeon rewards. Yet WvW and PvPers do from just playing their game mode.

What I am suggesting is a track that allows us raiders and FotM runners to work towards the season materials the same way WvW and PvP players can. You people play one game mode and yet have access to the PvE rewards. I’m not asking for PvE players to receive PvP or WvW rewards at all. I’m asking for Fractal and Raid runners to be able to gain other PvE rewards in the same way by playing the game mode we want to.

If you read my post you will see what I’m actually talking about. PvP and WvW CAN go to the season three maps, grab the nodes, and return to their game mode and continue working towards more. HOWEVER we who only play FotM and Raids are unable to do that. Our game mode is just FotM and Raids. Most of us don’t like going into the competitive game modes. So we are locked into only grabbing the nodes in the season 3 maps. I don’t care about any other rewards from the tracks. Just an easier way to obtain those materials that the competitive players can obtain through both farming the nodes AND playing their own game mode.

If you want to say it’s just as easy for a FotM or Raider to get anything else in PvE then I say anyone from WvW and PvP has just as easy a time getting them. There shouldn’t be tracks for the seasonal maps that allow them easier access to those rewards. So stop trying to shut down something you apparently aren’t looking at from more than one angle.

People have read your post, they have read the tl;dr.

It’s called disagreeing.

Maybe if you gave less attitude people would be willing to disscuss things more instead of blaming others of not agreeing.

You’re on a public message board, your opinion is bound not to get shared by everyone.

On that topic, it makes sense to encourage less popular game modes via additional rewards. Pve is by far the biggest segment with the most diverse content both gameplay and rewards wise. There is no need to fix something that’s not broken.

See what I did there, not fun arguing with attitude is it?

It will be the same as gliding in the old world. It’s not needed, but kitten useful to have.

Don’t expect to see to many mastery related movement options from HoT in PoF since the maps themselve will likely be flatter than HoT maps. Still gliding will remain a very useful tool to have.

One can expect that this trend will continue with future expansions meaning that the mounts we get now will not be required or as useful, but a nice out of combat speed addon if one has them.

It’s a mixed bag. If you make the expansions to reliable on old masteries, you create a huge content/ability wall any new or returning player has to pass. By keeping it light, they are allowing for everyone to enjoy the content (similar to people who opted to not buy HoT never had gliding in vanilla Tyria yet could still reach 100% of the world there).

The rules that were valid 1 year ago are still valid now:

- defensive stats are useless
- offensive stats are useful
- celestial was never good on mesmer for pve

Thus knights, Soldier, etc. are all useless in pve (except when needing to hit toughness breakpoints as tank for raids maybe).

Same goes for Traveler Runes. If you want those for the 25% movement speed passive (god knows I wouldn’t know what else they are good for except as cheap boon duration which can be better gained via Durability or Herald runes) you might find this trait interesting https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Time_Marches_On .

Otherwise currently it’s same old same old, go berserker or if possible Commanders (which now is the must use in raids when not using a budget build since boon duration food gets wacked soon).

That might all change with the expansion though and very likely will.

So do this: get exotic berserker gear, play around with the class a bit, finish up story and achievements you want to have. There is not that much time until the expansion so anything more expensive seems futile until the expansion builds are out.

Taltevus.3289:

No it’s damage does not come from stealth…The damage comes from the mechanic Hiding in plain sight.

If there aren’t 4 mesmers running around the real one is hiding.
UNLESS you only play with 2 clones and yourself at all times. <—No one does this.
OR you turn of that auto attack off and act like a clone with 3 illusions and yourself. <——players do this.

Uh ok. I guess you feel smart….because I was not addressing the made up idea of damage from stealth you concocted…in my OP. So yeah…and I am still…not talking about stealth. Stealth is not the issue.

No ones gives a kitten about the damage done. That can be adjusted and it will get adjusted.

The fact that this damage happens while a majority of players are unable to counter the illusions due to inexperience and stealth will cause the same problems mesmers have had for years (and thiefs mind you).

To many condis? Fine, easily corrected via a balance change on how many condis the elite spec stacks, or via the damage modifier on the skill or via a change to condition removal.

The mechanic itsself, not that easily changable without scraping the entire idea.

Now answer me this:

1.) when have I said that damage was not an issue on the elite specialisation? Exactly not 1nce, that’s something you put in my mouth.

2.) have you ever played any MMOs with stealth classes in them? It’s a given that people hate having to counter stealth mechanics, hence why most stealth classes deal subpar damage and even then that’s not enough.

Taltevus.3289:

Which is why I said. LOOK AT WHAT WAS ADVERTISED A FINISHED IDEA REGARDING THE CHRONOMANCER!
And look at what we have now.

Thanks for making my point. Chrono was changed not based on mechanic but based on strength of the mechanic. Most notible change was the nerf from 66% cooldown reduction to 33%.

The mechanic remained the absolute same.

Extrapolate to this situation: the mechnic is the issue, not the numbers it produces since those can get adjusted.

bai long.2085:

Certainly every part of the game should be accessible to all players regardless of skill. I don’t think they should all be beatable by all players, but accessible…yes.

You are not complaining about lack of access (at least not access denial from the developers side but rather from the playerbase). You are complaining about lack of rewards.

You have access to all the raid wings. You can literally walk up to them and enter. You could start your own raid with your own rules, or find people with more lax gearing rules, etc.

You are actively handing over part of the controll to others due to inexperience, lazyness or whatever other reason (otherwise you’d just start your own raid, the pug community is big enough), then complaining that others are imposing rules you dislike.

bai long.2085:

Legendary armors accessible outside of the raids.

Absolutely. Though since raiding constitutes the pve access to legendary armor, all that is really lacking is spvp and wvw.

Now given how gated legendary armor was designed in pve, I don’t think many people would have access to it via spvp and wvw.

It would be something along the lines of reach top 10% of the spvp ranking with a ton of other stuff. For a game mode mind you where legendary armor offers 0 benefit except for skins (so why reward it in the first place?).

Same goes for wvw. Most people understand rewards being added to wvw as merely time investments with 0 lack of skill. While I would love to see legendary armor find it’s way here, I doubt arenanet will hand out charity legendary armor based purely on time invested.

Some might argue raids are not that hard in the first place, to which I’m inclined to agree, they are by far more demanding than running in a circle flipping keeps though (to oversimplify wvw a bit).

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Livia

Taltevus.3289:

Cyninja.2954:

Because high burst out of stealth has never been an issue in MMOs which draws a lot of hate from players.

I predict they will gut us like a dead fish the moment Mirage hits spvp and wvw.

At least there is some hope that with skill splitting pve might not be affected to hard.

We shall see.

I am not discussing burst from stealth though.
I am talking about:

Revolving-> Bleed, Torment, Burn, Confusion and Vulnerability
Underneath-> Blind, Cripple, Immobilize, Weakness, Poison and Chill.

And you seriously think other classes measly condi cleanse is going to mitigate that?
Cleanse one condition when you dodge. Yeah, ok…thanks. Lmfao.
remove a condition when you swap a weapon, weee. r_r’
remove 1 every ten seconds. My door turns much slower. -_-’

How about 15 seconds of resistance locked under a revolving door of every boon in the game -1.

You would need (the original) Diamond Skin Ele to hard counter this.
Don’t forget…that mirage cloak applies to your clones as well.

Learn to read and comprehend please.

I’m saying exactly that the way the elite is setup right now, it will be way overtuned for pvp and total kitten for pve. Thus we will see the nerf bat within 1-2 weeks after the expanions release tops. Especially because it’s damage coming from stealth which players in MMOs have a very low bar of acceptance for.

Maybe if you spent 2 minutes understanding what I had writen you might have saved yourself some time.

Levetty.1279:

aelfwe.4239:

I dont think mirage will be meta in pve\raid, crap conditions (confusion\torment) aside bleed and situational mechanics as cloack make it looks like an op pvp build but a niche (mathias\cairn) build for raid\pve.

Considering that guard is goin to stack permaquick (heal\aegis\stab gives 2 sec of quickness – 4 with boon duration) as well as sharing burning to other people every time he put quickness with 10sec icd + personal burning, we can expect him to do more dmg than chrono.

So our last anchor to meta is alacrity.

New rev spec is goin to take alacrity aside burning \0/

As a mesmer im a bit worried

If Chrono loses its Raid spot I am looking forward as to what reason people with come up with to say we should be crap in the rest of the game.

Don’t worry, the sheer stupidity and thick headedness will prevail until mesmer is once again in a spot as during end of vanilla: not needed anywhere, now with not even as portal bots.

I do feel for necros though, they have had a rough time ever since release and were not really needed in the raid meta. They do deserve some love.

We will have to wait and see. At least spvp and wvw might be even more deadly now on mesmer, until the nerf bat hits us there too.

Since you main thief, you should be familiar with the concept of evasion tanking since that class can take just about no hits to the face.

Mesmer works very similar in that regard, just that we add blurr, distortion, blocks and interupts into the mix. Your mainhand sword for example provides 2 1/2 seconds of blurr on a base 12s cooldown.

Mesmers are quite squishy and survive (just like thief) by actively ignoring attacks. It does require some getting used to.

Fay.2357:

zealex.9410:

Levetty.1279:

zealex.9410:

Last thing chrono needs os a buff. Of any kind.

Lowest dps increase of the 3 support classes in Raids
Lowest dps of the 3 support classes in Raids.
Useless in Open/Stories/Achievement hunting.

Lowest dps increase he says LUL your are delusional. I solo everything in open world fine idk about u and what should you be usefull to in open world? There you can tw and make pressing 1 a better experience for 10 ppl…

Ranger with spotter, frost spirit, and gotl adds more DPS than quickness and alacrity.

Warrior with ea, banners, and 25 might production adds more DPS than quickness and alacrity.

Your absurd claim isn’t worth spending the time to dig up the old thread that we calculated this in, but levetty might have it bookmarked or something.

+1

Because high burst out of stealth has never been an issue in MMOs which draws a lot of hate from players.

I predict they will gut us like a dead fish the moment Mirage hits spvp and wvw.

At least there is some hope that with skill splitting pve might not be affected to hard.

We shall see.

zealex.9410:

OriOri.8724:

So if this spec is a DPS spec, it better be hitting close to or above 30k DPS consistently in a variety of situations. Otherwise it wouldn’t even compare to current dps specs, so it would never be taken.

I was told that someone hit 80k dps with mirage in the test server.

and that is going to stay on live for exactly how long until it gets nerfed?

Levetty.1279:

Cyninja.2954:

It’ll be nice to be able to finally solo stuff in open world though if axe does provide some sort of consisten dps boost.

Its confusion and torment based.

I’ll give arenanet so much that I do think it’ll be better dps than our current builds with less of a hassle mechanic.

I mean we will improve from terrible at solo to mediocre at solo.

Let me have my small rays of light, they are so far between for this class.

Now all that is left is for one of the other support specs to outshine chrono (which considering the powercreep seen so far is very likely) and mesmer won’t be meta of any kind.

This way we can at least play the class in open world, somewhat.

Working as intended.

Fay.2357:

Shame it’s on warrior though.

It’s insane, half the effects on Spellbreaker look exactly how mesmer skill should look except in gold and not purple.

Why not, it’s not as though warrior wasn’t already one of the most played classes. Let’s give them even more cool stuff.

I don;t even care any more. I main mesmer and warrior for raids and have enough classes fully geared to switch to whatever class is needed and I find fun. Seriously doubting mesmer will be it for the next expansion.

It’ll be nice to be able to finally solo stuff in open world though if axe does provide some sort of consisten dps boost.

OriOri.8724:

These specs look awful honestly. I mean they look fun, but the powercreep is absolutely insane. I was hoping they would have learned from HoT, but this is kitten honestly. The specs WP talked about are ridiculously overpowered. Beyond broken.

The equation is simple:

does the expansion bring in more new/returning players compared to the nerfs scare away which will hit weeks after release of the expansion.

Otherwise they can trash their entire elite specialisation system down the road.

RabbitUp.8294:

Cyninja.2954:

RabbitUp.8294:

Cyninja.2954:

Does Dragonhunter have the 4th highest large target dps with a kittened simple rotation? Yes.

It doesn’t. The benchamark assumes 100% Unscathed Contenter uptime, which is impossible.

Not impossible, just hard. Actually not that hard since you don’t have a hard rotation to worry about.

No, it’s impossible. Boss auras in raids pop aegis.

You are assuming we get to bring any utility in our dps spec. The current one doesn’t allow for that, what makes you think the future one does?

You are putting words in my mouth. If it brings no utility, then welcome to the world of Necro, DD, DH, Tempest.

The math says differently. The past experience from mesmer balance patches says differently. Our clunky class mechanic says differently.

Leaks say differently.

Still not seeing it. Guess we’ll have to wait and see how our class faires after the first rebalance patches which I’m 100% sure will come in case we even are at in competative state.

Levetty.1279:

Its basically summon single target clones to attack instead of summon single target Phantasms to attack.

Its the same as our current DPS spec except slightly easier to set up and still just as uesless outside of 2 or 3 raid bosses. Oh and between the inevatable nerf to ambush attacks due to people already crying OP and the pathetic traits it will eventually end up doing less damage then our current DPS spec.

This.

Anyone who seriously thinks arenanet will let us have serious alpha out of stealth with high consistant damage has no clue how balance works.

Also alpha damage was never our problem as far as short term burt goes. Setup time and consisten damage always have been though.

I’d love to say that some people were calling this early, but I’m still afraid others will call out to the expansion as solution.

Donari.5237:

I just tried for Fearless on my Reaper. Bad idea. The doppelganger siphoned up to full health while I kited it as I built my 25 stacks. Then I did get the Alacrity but it did NOT clear the 25 stacks so my only recourse was to use the ghosts lest I run around in circles forever. I wasn’t in any danger, but neither was my doppelganger.

Was it a bug? Should the 25 stacks have vanished while I had Alacrity?

Did the fight on my reaper, the life drain let me realise very soon I’d rather bump this guys head with my warrior. I also had pets out which as someone mentioned earlier means he stacks up his damage resistance during the time his defiance bar is up.

Best recommendation would be a petless build with high breakbar damage though the life drain will make things more complicated.

I didn’t even attempt Fearless on my mesmer. She was using spirits left and right.

Nightshade.5924:

A couple of years ago I started a thread on this topic. Back then people kept insisting that the guy running the monetary system knew what he was doing.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/archive/bltc/Dev-Challenge-Monetary-System-Fixes/page/2#post4346285

Now:
Anyone can get 2 gold per day
Running the PvP season can net you over 100 gold easy
Finishing a “monthly” gets you a 2% bonus to all money from kills.

Some math here. Sunrise currently costs 3069 gold to buy, as of the market a few minutes ago. 524 Gems gets you 100 gold and 800 gems costs $10 US dollars. So that’s 31 units of 524 gems. That totals 16244 gems, which comes to 203 dollars in real US currency.

Back when I did the original thread, this calculation ended up w/ Sunrise costing OVER ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS.

Depreciation? Inflation? Grossly EPIC FAIL? I’m not sure what to call the current so-called monetary system, except it IS broke. It needs to be reset and rebuilt. By someone who can KEEP Gold to Gems STABLE.

Instead of someone who apparently wants to devalue our hard work in game. The numbers don’t lie… there’s WAY too much gold lying around.

nuff said

You are basing this entire argument on the fact that gold to gem value has decreased. Unfortunately you fail to realise, gold to gem value was never intended to remain stable and it never has.

Now if you’d taken the time to research stability of ectos prices over 5 years, prices of legendarys and basically most common and necessary trade goods over a long timespan in gold, you’d have come to a different conclusion.

I’m sorry your creditcard warrior approach to this game was busted.

Curunen.8729:

zealex.9410:

Daishi.6027:

Fay.2357:

Daishi.6027:

melee

Daishi.6027:

DH.

Hmmmmmmmm

Was thinking more on the lines of meditrapper.

Curunen.8729:

At this point my personal biggest question is…

…Astralaria or The Shining Blade! xD

Only have enough resources to finish one precursor and respective gift before release (already have generic gifts ready), and I have no idea which one to go for. Going to totally depend on mirage vs chrono builds and which I prefer.

Shining blade!

Both ofc?

Both will take me another year and a throwaway alt to for HoT map completion to get a second gift of maguuma (I only have one character).

In that case, go with sword if the skins are both equally appealing to you and the difference in gold cost is not a concern (Astralaria currently costs about 2,950 gold, The Shining Blade about 3,500 gold).

Reason 1: it’s available as main and oh weapon to core mesmer and thus to every elite spec.

Reason 2: it is used by 5 core professions and thus beats axe with 4 core professions (and it’s always a mainhand weapon minimum, axe is not on revenant).

Reason 3: you have no idea if the mesmer axe spec will be fun for you to play (or meta on a more practical note). Nothing sucks more than having a legendary you can’t use while playing as chrono.

Reason 4: unlocking the sword skin allows you to use it on your offhand sword. Looks sweet.

Is this about maximum damage output?

If so, have you considered berserker runes?

The Gleam of Sentience and the old eaters share cooldowns.

If you have used the old eaters before making the gleam, you won’t be able to exchange on that day via the gleam and the option will be invisible. Happened to me on the day I crafted it with all 3 eaters. Lucky enough I didn’t immedaitely rebuy them at Hobbs.

Vise versa I guess once you use the gleam to create packages, the old eaters won’t be available. Essentially making the recovery option on Hobbs not needed as far as more consumers is required (still good for recovery if something happened before making the gleam.

Chadramar.8156:

I think one aspect of some people’s dislike for Jenna that hasn’t been touched yet is that the “tyranny = good, any hint of democracy = bad” story is sketchy no matter how many in-world justifications the writers decide to throw at it. These people and events aren’t real, they were written that way by choice, and it’s simply not a theme that works for everyone.

Oh I agree, it’s understandable that people will draw from their own experience and values when judging story and events. Maybe the lack (mostly due to time constraints) of story or lore related obvious ingame depictions of how the monrachy is beneficial (or detrimental) as well as the same for the ministry would have made this a tad clearer.

On the other hand, we currently live in a real life world where dictatorships in certain parts of the world were collapsed and the people living there are far worse off than before with open war in many of them. I hate drawing this analogy since there have been more benevolent monarchies during our history while dictatorships almost alsways have been oppressive. It is the best way of approaching this theme from a modern persons view though.

Chadramar.8156:

That’s my take on it, at least. In combination with Jenna’s attitude towards the player character and my persistent wondering of “Okay, what the bleep is my character’s purpose in this story? Is it just being condescended to and yanked around by yet another 2-k3wl-4-u NPC?” (*) in the mess that was LS3, my attitude towards her is definitely soured … and it was not that good to begin with, given her involvement in the failed attack on Kralkatorrik.

Also understandable since Trahearne and people not wanting to play the ever lackey in the story. One has to seperate the animosity from the role the player character has from the actual political happenings though.

I guess the writers wanted to tone down the entire: you are the greatest, you are the best, you are essentially king kong banging his chest (there even fit a small Hall of Fame reference in there ^^). While some characters pouting and being mean to the main character, that is partly understandable (Braham is going through his mourning phase, something everyone who has lost a close loved one understands especially if it was a parent) while on the other hand that’s how stuff often works out in real life too. Once a crysis is resolved, people hurry back to normality and old deeds fade.

VAHNeunzehnsechundsiebzig.3618:

Well, according to some dialogue in the latest episode there is a new legate minister and he is working hard to undo some of the damage done by Caudecus.

So it seems that the ministry is back in power.

Which would be futher proof that Queen Jennas intervention was ment to weed out the rott and not as a pure power play.

CaptainVanguard.4925:

The problem is that despite this one evil does not make another good. Jennah’s reaction and manipulations might indeed make her a lesser evil now, but her methods clearly show an early sign of a willingness to employ draconian methods to achieve her results.

Combine this with the very occultistic method of practice the Shining Blade employ in their recruitment of new inner circle members and it becomes clear that the Blade and Jennah are actually very little better if at all than the Mantle and Ministry itself.

In conclusion.

Its very likely over time Jennah will become an antagonist, because she has been playing the long game to secure power, which once she fully has, she will have no need for equality. This has already been made clear with the fact she calls her actions against the ministry a “precaution” but it becomes clear she is very unlikley to ever relinquish her new found control over them.

In essence, she is a tyrant, she is, a manipulative and clever tyrant that preceeds herself a democrat because over time, she is slowly becomming a dictator.

You are making the one mistake which people love to make: you are judging a situation from outside the glass bubble and drawing analogies which in the context provided make no sense.

We have had no idicators so far that Queen Jenna has been abusing power. The love of her people towards her paints her as a benevolent ruler with the public strongly in favor of her. The story has been very clear on who the antagonists within the ruling class have been so far.

Everything else has been pure speculation from your end based on your own real world view and belief which is unfounded or depicted within the game lore or story wise.

CaptainVanguard.4925:

Notice how the Charr now help her? Why? Because she is seen as a beneficient face with a beneficial goal, to secure peace.

What you never understand is “at any cost” is also part of her agenda. She is willing to do what ever it takes, however, it takes, to secure that peace.

Over time, this will, inavoidably, make her into a tyrant.

She is securing peace because she understands that in the longrun, that is the best option for her people as far as safety and quality life. May I call into memory what happened the last time the charr and humans clashed? Who was forced were exactly? Holding on to past grudges while literally the world is falling appart (Dragon Crysis, White Mantle Crysis, now Balthasar Crysis) would be something an unfit ruler would do.

Current meta raid setup is as follows:

- 2mesmer (chrono+chronotank)
- 2 warriors (PS or cPS)
- 1-2 rangers (druid+cranger or 2nd druid)
- 4 dps (elemtalist, engi, ranger)

Depending on what you want to play pick one of the classes. I too would say cPS might be the easiest rotation and demand wise.

Otherwise ranger fills in multiple roles as primary healer and condi damage or kiter on specific bosses.

Mesmer are always on short supply so that is a vliad choice as well but requires familarity with almost all boss mechanics and ideally the ability to tank (in case the support slot is filled).

Djinn.9245:

Cyninja.2954:

On topic, I doubt any future legenarys will ever be tradable again. It deducts from their value (being of cosmetic nature and rarity). It’s nice to not see everyone running around with T2 legendarys, makes them more unique. T1 legendarys were basically less desired skin wise than normal skins, not good in a game about flash and style.

I don’t agree with this position. You don’t see many people with T2 because they are more difficult to make and because they haven’t been around as long. I have many people in my guild who made one T2 and said they would never make another because of how difficult / expensive it was. For the people who don’t have that issue, there is the fact that T2 legendaries haven’t been around as long so there hasn’t been the same amount of time past for a lot of people to have a chance to make them. There are relatively more T1s because they were around what – more than 3 years before the first T2?

I also disagree that “T1 legendarys were basically less desired skin wise than normal skins”. That’s an incredible statement to make lol.

I’m not seeing your counter argument?

Less people make them just means they are rarer, the reasons don’t matter. Thus they have more value.

Second, T1 legendarys are more than half the price of T2 legendarys. For people who want the effect and not the skin (which there is a lot of by now, especially for T1) the players make the T1 legendary, hence the skins are less desired. That is before even accounting for the longer duration they were available which only supports my argument even more.

It’s basic logic really.

You can disagree with whatever you want, the fact remains a lot of players (especially seasoned ones) who own legendarys do not do so for the T1 skins(except some select few which are fan favorites). Those who enjoy the T2 skins make them, others do not. In either case, the T2 ones are and will remain rarer than the T1 counterparts.

I honestly do hope for the next expansion to be the big success and smash hit arenanet deserves.

GW2 has remained the best buy2play (and free2play) non cash shop required MMO on the market which is no total korean grindfest (no offense, just not so popular in the western market).

The next expansion and the variety it will possibily offer with finally different elite skills for classes may become a game changer.

Maybe though I doubt it.

The more realistic scenario is as follows:

- the Ultimate edition of HoT turns into the new Ultimate edition for PoF (the next expansion)
- HoT might be made available to free to play accounts (or bundled into the next expansion, even more of a reason to keep the price high)
- either way, financially it makes no sense to buy HoT now if it comes bundled with PoF. That is if money was a concern so far.

As Inculpatus cedo said, the gems in the collection alone make it unlikely to see huge financial benefits here. If you are thinking of buying HoT now I’d probably wait until the announcement on tuesday. If you weren’t encouraged to buy it the last 2 years, I doubt a couple of days or months will make a difference.

It’s posts like these where I just know, no matter how easy arenanet makes maps, someone will not get it and complain.

The new map is tiny, well interconnected and has 1 official and 4 additional waypoints which unlock per account meaning all your future characters have instant access to them. Combine that with movement masteries from HoT and you can reach every location on the map within minutes.

This is you m8, not the map.

Zaoda.1653:

I find I kill things WAYYY faster on my ele than I would, with a mesmer,

Comparing the absolute top tier damage dealer with the absolute last tier damage dealer does that.

Zaoda.1653:

TL;DR: Are there any good PvE builds that don’t require clones/phantasms as the main source of damage, are power based, and use melee/physical attack skills? Preferably ones that deal good AOE damage.

That don’t require phantasms? No.

You can minimise the hassle slightly by focusing on area damage. Greatsword was mentioned, that works, so does focus with it’s pull and aoe phantasm. Focus pull some enemys together, cast focus 5 while running into the group as to not scatter them, Sword 2 the entire group and then finish them off with Mind wrack.

Astralporing.1957:

Westenev.5289:

There’s no rush to get the item

In a way, there is. Some of the achieves required for the collection were really hard to obtain before chapter 6 hit, because they required a lot of people doing certain events, and noone was doing those events anymore. And while it’s not the case now, as there’s a fresh wave of people doing the ls3 map achieves/looking for collection drops, in 2-3 months’ time that wave is going to thin out and disappear.
So yeah, you better do the collection now, while you still can.

Could you point out some of those heavy to get achievements?

I’m sure there are, I just don’t recall any.

I took a 8 months break (skipping episodes 2-4 basically) and had no issue whatsoever to finish all the achievements before the last patch hit. All it took me was to redo them which granted was a lot easier now. It was far from impossible before if you tried during prime time.

On topic, I doubt any future legenarys will ever be tradable again. It deducts from their value (being of cosmetic nature and rarity). It’s nice to not see everyone running around with T2 legendarys, makes them more unique. T1 legendarys were basically less desired skin wise than normal skins, not good in a game about flash and style.

Djinn.9245:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

L-weapons are more/less available to everyone, whereas l-armor is stated by ANet to be one of the perks of raiding. So, as Cyninja says, legendary armor pieces aren’t necessarily a good comparison. Notice further that l-armor pieces use 15 clover versus 77 for an l-weapon. So it might be better to compare the cost of 5 armor pieces with one weapon. On that basis, 1400-1800g for trinkets is in the ballpark.

I’m having a hard time understanding this concept. 1 trinket = 1 piece of armor from what I can see, not a whole set.

He is comparing the requirement of Mystic Clovers between legendarys and mentioning that L-armor is heavily gated thus not a good comparison.

Make sure not to damage him while his breakbar is not broken or else the damage reduction he gets stacks up.

If you want to do easy mode, run a warrior through with headbutt and wildblow. Break bluebar ->do damage -> break bluebar again -> do damage -> finish.

Unlike what people think, minions are not so advantageous. He will focus them, they don’t do so much burst as to be of enough value, the fight is all about having crowd controll and then enough burst to finish it before the debuff stacks up to high.

The story mastery points are 1 time only and if a similar step was completed on a different race, you are not elegible for the point a second time.

There are 9 new core Tyria mastery points with the last patch added though and most of them are very easy to get to.

Absolutely.

I’d actually like to amend this idea into something else:

- make a fricking lore tab where this kind of stuff gets added.

The same loretab could be used as a guide and basic explanation for new players. Sort of like a compendium of knowledge and if you want to go all over the top, add in some of the great GW2 art to go along with it so people have a blast reading it.

The game needs some serious quality of life improvements for new players in form of mechanic explenation, goal setting and how achievements and rewards work in this game. I can’t stress enough how many times I’ve heard new players say: there is nothing to do, the reward process is to convoluted or I dislike having to check 3-4 outside webpages just to get a basic understanding of what I need to do.

You can easily reach up to high level fractal level T3 without any ascended armor. Armor is only needed for T4.

That said, again weapons are your main priority and ascended trinkets. We understood you are making items for crafting ascended gear, it’s just not a good idea at this point in time. I’m sure the Grandtailor Marks will remain valid in the future.

With 2 agony resistance slots on weapons, 1 on backpiece (non infused since infusing the back ist quite expensive), 3 per ring (if attuned and infused) and 1 per accessoire you’ll endup with 11 agony infusion slots. That’s 11 times potentially +9 (3-4 gold on the TP) infusions giving you 99 agony resistance (keeps you at minimal agony damage up to fractal level 71). If you exchange 7 +9s for +10s (7-8 gold on the TP, since we want to save on infusing the backpiece) you can even push your ar to 106 (good until fractal level 75).

Personally I think the LW Season 3 maps are absolutely worth the 200 gems investment per map. Once the expansion hits everyone will be in the new zones leaving the old story zones a bit emptier for a certain period of time (until the new expansion hype has died down and people start farming all over again).

Right now the LWS3 zones are very frequented with the legendary trinkets release. That’s just me though, if you want to wait for a price discount that’s fine. I’d probably get at least Episode 3 for access to Bitterfrost Frontier and the trinkets from that zone, but that’s just me.

EDIT: and if you are wondering, the first set of trinkets on mesmer should be berserker.

latinkuro.7304:

The price is way over the top for a single trinket…..
“but it has a killer aura, it is balanced” some will shout.

NO, it is NOT !

Whoever implemented it, take a queue from legendary armor, will you !

As it stands I will not make this, until the price is normalized.

This coming from someone that has made at least one full set of legendary armor.

Then they would have had to make the trinket collection more timegated to at least 4-6 months. Same as legendary armor, because that’s why legendary armor is so cheap (and legendary armor is dirt cheap gold wise). Oh and make it so only 10-20% of the playerbase have access to this collection.

Maybe they will add something like that down the line.

If the price is to high, don’t make the legendary. Same rule as every other legendary so far.

The 50 kill one can be tricky because the NPCs get slaughtered within seconds and you get the attention of everything in the room at once.

The easiest solution is to lay down as much damage as possible to kill off as many as possible bevor they all target you. I did this on a necromancer (similar to qtfy raid condi build). I placed staff area fields and the moment the enemies appeared I: used Rise, then went into shroud, Reaper F5, then reaper F4, then out of shroud and epidemic then back to scepter focus and range down anything that survived that while ressurecting dead NPC. Rinse and repeate on next wave.

Alternatively play a thief and permastealth and let Anise solo everything.

Pifil.5193:

Neural.1824:

Exciton.8942:

Let’s be honest, the convenience factor on legendary items is overrated.

Fixed.

I’d like to know the percentage for people who actually have needed to use the stat swapping on legendary items. My guess is that the majority of stat swapping happens with legendary armor.

For each legendary that I have, I’ve set the stats once, and then not needed to change them since.

I would guess that the majority of stat swapping begins when you have Legendary armour.

Swapping a legendary dagger from Berserker to Viper doesn’t make much sense if the rest of your equipment is still Berserker, after all, but if you had a full set of legendary equipment including trinkets then stat swapping starts to become an amazing thing.

Yes and no, I think people would be suprised how little benefit legendarys bring.

There is still the issue of:
- weapon sigils not changing
- there usually only being 1 toptier endgame build
- people with legendarys usually have no small amount of ascended. I had 7 full ascended sets done before finishing the legendary light armor. Could have easily used 2-3 of those sets for my now legendary carrying character
- the actual hassle of changing the stats.

My mesmer is running 70% of the time in berserker stats which I will occasionally switch to commanders when I feel like it. That’s it.

RabbitUp.8294:

Cyninja.2954:

Does Dragonhunter have the 4th highest large target dps with a kittened simple rotation? Yes.

It doesn’t. The benchamark assumes 100% Unscathed Contenter uptime, which is impossible.

Not impossible, just hard. Actually not that hard since you don’t have a hard rotation to worry about.

RabbitUp.8294:

Cyninja.2954:

Giving up chronomancer is giving up 50% of our utility is it not? No alacrity, no shield for Tides of Time.

Of course it means that. And it should be the case. No dps spec brings support-tier utility. Ranger might bring 1 spirit or Condi Berzerker 1 banner, you couldn’t possibly think a dps mesmer would have alacrity-tier utility.

You are assuming we get to bring any utility in our dps spec. The current one doesn’t allow for that, what makes you think the future one does?

RabbitUp.8294:

Cyninja.2954:

Giving up chronomancer is giving up 50% of our utility is it not? No alacrity, no shield for Tides of Time.

The title is “Chrono dps and expac” and you don’t want us to talk about the expac?

No, I’m saying don’t color the current situation in a different light than it is. Fact is, you can’t know what the expansion brings thus assuming the dps problem gets fixed is just that, an assumption.

On the otherhand we have close to 5 years of experience that show that arenanet were so far incapable to provide mesmer with a proper dps spec.

RabbitUp.8294:

Yeah, closer than you are describing (galaxies apart), not close in general. I.E. the gap can be easily bridged.

The math says differently. The past experience from mesmer balance patches says differently. Our clunky class mechanic says differently.

As RabbitUp said, I would hold off on getting ascended gear (at least no armor) for now. You seem to have spent some time gather information, that’s good. You lack a lot of experience with the game (and especially endgame), that’s bad. I’ll give the reasoning first, then my recommendation:

- ascended armor is barely an upgrade over exotic, it is 10-20 times more expensive though. Absolutely do not get ascended armor, you will regret it at this point in the game.

- ascended weapons might be useful, but are quite expensive. If you absolutely want ascended weapons, don’t craft them. Do the Caladbolg questchain(get the 1hand sword), get you elite specialisation collection shield, use exotic on other slots.

-ascended trinkets are easily available via Living World Season 3 maps, no crafting or gold needed (well except the map materials and unbound magic which could be converted to gold). Get berserker first, then commanders second. Those 2 trinket sets will get you through 100% of the pve game.

- there is an expansion around the corner with very likely heavy changes to the meta

All this said, I’d recommend you get some experience in the game modes you actually want to play. Get some experience on different exotic gear with your class. There is no hurry to get ascended armor, trinkets via gathering is fine. Use all methods available to you to get items from achievements instead of crafting. Crafting ascended gear has to ALWAYS be the very last or desperate choice since the avenues to get ascended from collections/drops is quite high.

I remember doing this jp the first time (with a video guide from dulfy). Took me over 1.5 hours (not risking the checkpoint system I waited for portal to always be rdy). Vowed never to go in again.

1 week ago I decided to finish my mursat token collection and had to slowly climb it a 2nd time, it was way easier.

Then post patch I did it a 3rd time, took me 25 minutes.

Worst case, pay someone to get you up. There is a ton of people running the jp currently again.

RabbitUp.8294:

Cyninja.2954:

RabbitUp.8294:

Cyninja.2954:

That paired with our very disadvantageous class mechanic (relying on temporary summons to do damage) and our current position in the damage table (deadbeat last, by a mile, no actually by a galaxy) makes me not all to hopeful that within the scope of some rework we might become viable (raid or fractal damage wise).

Condi mesmer is doing 25k dps, that’s a lot closer to top tier dps than what you are describining

So, you are comparing it to literally
http://qtfy.eu/benchmarks/

Top tier dps: 33.8-36.2k small hitbox target (let’s not look at large since that would make you look even sillier).

Mesmer dps: 25.8k (against a select few bosses)

25.8/33.8 = 76.33 -> 23.67% less damage
25.8/36.2 = 71.27 -> 28.73% less damage

We do over 1 quarter less damage under IDEAL circumstances and against a very small amount of bosses. In what world is this close? No seriously, and I haven’t even compared to large hitboxes since that would actually make me cry.

Not counting the fact that we give up almost all group utility, have a terrible rampup time and could basically be replaced by a ton of better dps classes.

FYI 10% is a huge difference in a competative enviroment, 25%+ is like bringing a knife to a submachine gun fight. It’s NOT close.

Now look at dragonhunter’s 29.3k. That’s with an absolutely selfish dps-focused spec with zero utility.

Mesmer hasn’t even got its dps spec yet and it will always have the utility of portal.

I never said mesmer is doing competitive dps, I said it’s close enough that a dps spec can push it to top tier dps. The post I quoted said it was galaxy aparts from top, doing half the damage, which is absolutely false, because they were looking at chrono support dps.

So your respons to my argument that mesmer has the most terrible dps ingame is:“Another class is less viable and we don’t even have a dps spec yet.” How is that an argument?

Does Dragonhunter have the 4th highest large target dps with a kittened simple rotation? Yes.
Did I say mesmer are unviable in the current meta? No.
Did I say every other class is viable? No.
Did I say mesmer will remain unviable for ever? I voiced concern in my faith that arenanet is able to address our dps problems but never stated that it’s impossible, so no.
Giving up chronomancer is giving up 50% of our utility is it not? No alacrity, no shield for Tides of Time.

As far as damage difference, more than 25% difference IS galaxies. Think of it this way:
You can complete every boss encounter with literally every dps class ingame, even not toptier ones. Doing so with mesmer dps is close to impossible on some boss fights. That’s galaxies, period.

Look this is simple, our dps is trash beyond compare. We are still viable due to other factors. I’ve never said anything else. Now stop arguing that the expansion is going to fix anything and argue based on what the CURRENT balance situation is. At the same time there is enough peoplel left and right who scream for mesmer nerfs because they feel jelly that we excell at our one useful role ingame atm.

RabbitUp.8294:

I never said mesmer is doing competitive dps, I said it’s close enough that a dps spec can push it to top tier dps. The post I quoted said it was galaxy aparts from top, doing half the damage, which is absolutely false, because they were looking at chrono support dps.

You excatly said:

RabbitUp.8294:

Condi mesmer is doing 25k dps, that’s a lot closer to top tier dps than what you are describining

Now if your wording was poor, fine then I accept that in the heat of the moment you might have been unclear. Given your statement though I think you get how people might have been confused what you ment. Maybe you should have phrased it as:

“Condi mesmer is doing 25k dps, that’s better than having no dps spec but leaves us far behind top tier dps classes. Luckily we are excell at support.”

RabbitUp.8294:

Cyninja.2954:

That paired with our very disadvantageous class mechanic (relying on temporary summons to do damage) and our current position in the damage table (deadbeat last, by a mile, no actually by a galaxy) makes me not all to hopeful that within the scope of some rework we might become viable (raid or fractal damage wise).

Condi mesmer is doing 25k dps, that’s a lot closer to top tier dps than what you are describining

http://qtfy.eu/benchmarks/

Top tier dps: 33.8-36.2k small hitbox target (let’s not look at large since that would make you look even sillier).

Mesmer dps: 25.8k (against a select few bosses)

25.8/33.8 = 76.33 -> 23.67% less damage
25.8/36.2 = 71.27 -> 28.73% less damage

We do over 1 quarter less damage under IDEAL circumstances and against a very small amount of bosses. In what world is this close? No seriously, and I haven’t even compared to large hitboxes since that would actually make me cry.

Not counting the fact that we give up almost all group utility, have a terrible rampup time and could basically be replaced by a ton of better dps classes.

FYI 10% is a huge difference in a competative enviroment, 25%+ is like bringing a knife to a submachine gun fight. It’s NOT close.

msalakka.4653:

Ah, another p2w Power Creep Pack. They’ll probably release it in September or early October so they can still cash in separately on Mad King and Wintersday specials.

While I could not possibly care less about their pve nonsense, I look forward to having to shell out the cost of the expansion just to have access to the latest mandatory OP spec in the competitive modes.

Until they nerf it, anyway.

Yes, must be terrible to have to spend some money on the game after close to 2 years.

Shame on the developers to want to live and feed their families.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

One can always wait to purchase the next expansion until after all the second-generation Legendaries are released.

That’ll teach those Devs!

Of course, the rest of us will be enjoying the new content, rather than a content drought.

Good luck.

Gotta admit, this made me chuckle, a lot. Made people on voice chat wonder what I was doing.

Inculaptus cedo is right, show those nasty devs! Less lag in open world for the rest of us in the new expansion maps.

If you are unwilling to pay for the legendary trinket, get the bloodstone ones.

Arenanet is giving you options. You are complaining about one of them even though you have a perfectly valid alternative which is beyond dirt cheap.

Dashingsteel.3410:

I believe the company’s moral compass was questioned in the ops original post……. My entries are in regard to that…….. so I guess you are mistaken when you say that my posts have nothing to do with the topic creators post.

As I said, wide net. Why not bring politics into this as well, I’m sure you’ll find some people to agree there too.

Dashingsteel.3410:

No conspiracy….. they pulled the legendary team off the project(that we had paid for) to help with living world while they had 70 extra employees working on a new expansion

They were put on hold because the team was pulled.

To fix a different problem which was of far graver nature, content drought.

You are complaining about arenanet maximising ressources to provide the best most player experience.