Guild Wars 2

There were nerfs to the sustain of most bunkers, the tempest, the chrono, yet druid is fundamentally unchanged. A menders or crusader druid has the same playstyle as prepatch. What gives?

Let’s say the attack chain is 1.5 seconds long. Auto attacking for 10 seconds would corrupt 6 boons. The new corrupt boon plus master of corruption would add 3 corruption every 10 seconds. At this point necro would be corrupting around 1 boon per second. Those aren’t even all the tools necro has to convert. And you think this won’t be nerfed immediately?

apharma.3741:

aelfwe.4239:

Xyonon.3987:

Heya!

Announcement says that alacrity shall be nerfed from 66% faster recharge to 33% faster recharge. This means instead of 1.66s per 1s it’s now 1.33s.

100% alacrity uptime now: -40% CDR
100% alacrity uptime soon: -25% CDR

I think it’s justified, but I’d like to hear your toughts

Greez!
- Madame Le Blanc

Right now 100% alacrity uptime isnt possible on a raid (10 men) enviroment.

After nerf the alacrity effect nerf will impact on alacrity uptime on a raid enviroment with a 30-35% reduction(elementary school math)

The 30% reduction of alacrity uptime on a raid enviroment added to the alacrity effect nerf bring the nerf to move CDR from -40% to a -16,5% CDR.

In a raid enviroment it’s a 60% nerf of alacrity and not a 40% nerf as you stated.

You are totally ignoring the cascade effect on your tought, this nerf is a 30% stronger of what you stated

The question then remains, is it worth even bothering with a chrono when you can bring something that will do more DPS and/or get quickness elsewhere?

Because you can’t get quickness elsewhere. All other sources are bad.

I was told by a friend in software development that they are vastly overstating the number of people they have in these things. That if it had been 3 years and they had their purported amount of manpower a lot of things would be fixed by now.

He told me that it’s likely Anet doesn’t have actual coders, only story designers who edit tables, they outsource the rest. I don’t know if this is true, but I do know the company seems to be struggling on a pr front. At this point they need to be more transparent or they are going to lose a lot of business.

All auras in the game currently have tangible negative effects.
Burning, chill, stun, vulnerability (plus retaliation damage) , reflection.
Chaos armor dealt cripple, blindness and confusion.

If blindness became weakness it would be add more benefit to an already strong condi meta. Condi users can’t have glancing blows, and in a world of energy sigils altered endurance means nothing.

It would be a meaningless aura. The confusion it gives is not enough to cause meaningful damage, 1/3 to 1/9 as worse as the stack of burn from fire aura. The protection doesn’t protect against condition damage.

Beyond the occasional cripple (which doesn’t bother any ranged condi user) it would do literally nothing against any condi users.

If I just an aoe block that falls to unblockable then what is the point? The skill stop being interesting. If I comes to that I would prefer chaos storm to be how the well operated. Also aegis isn’t our thing. We give it randomly but to give it on purpose is just weird.

There are a number of minor bugs that could be fixed immediately. Somethings that require as much as one line of code. Why does anet wait 3 years to fix something like a shovel indicator that isnt the image of a shovel? This would help their PR so much.

The difference is in combat to out of combat potential tial. What can the tempest accomplish by blasting a fire field, giving a few auras, vs what Chronomancer can accomplish. Chrono needs targets for the second share, it gets most of its boons from chaos armor (and being hit), and needs the defensive lines. For massive amounts of boon share your just needed to be tempest and run warhorn. Blame the Herald. You could replace his level of boon share without having to camp a legend/attunement. An auramancer of sufficient boon duration would give everything a Herald does, in longer duration, plus vigor, a stronger protection, and auras. Not to mention a better stability share than the road on Jalis (armor of earth ftw).

nearlight.3064:

base necromancer with cele has a better time against bunk mesmers due to trait synergies. You’re too starved for utilities to make it work on reaper imo, since if you take signet heal you need locust to actually have good healing since vamp isn’t very good sustain. And plague signet is needed to not die to conditions and wurm or armor is needed for general sustain.

I’ll try it out though, since I usually don’t run untraited CB.

You need to overcome a deficit as each shatter removes 1 condition and applies 2 boons. Or you can just hope RNG works in your favour. It is possible to convert stab on the very first conversion, just not as likely given that they perma 6+ boons.

In the interest of transparency and reducing complaints let’s just make a thread with ways to kill bunker mesmer. No arguing. Just easy methods on bulleted lists. Make your posts as minimalist and on topic as possible. But feel free to add to each other’s posts if you have easier ways.

• bring a buddy

REAPER:

• run a signet reaper with corrupt boon
• wait till they use evade well
• call target on them when they pop the well
• use signet of vampirism about halfway through the well time
• follow up with corrupt boon and staff five
• cast chilled to the bone (insert text to stop censor)
• reaper 3, 5, 4
• if they blink out of chilled to the bone as you reaper 5
• then reaper 2, 3, 4
• if they blink away to a distance reaper 2 cannot reach
• then go into staff and load them with marks as you decap the point, send buddy off point to attack them or rotate away
• if this is the mid at legacy of the foefire
• then coordinate a condi bomb when you corrupt boon

trying to kill a bunker leads to 2v1s, if you can handle the stress on the team then do so, otherwise simply ignore the point they are bunkering

Gonna try to put up other stuff but the general notion is use unblockables and a type of boon removal (strip, rip, conversion) for their stability after they have used the evade well. Blurred frenzy is far less of a threat given that they are vulnerable to auras and on hit runes. Observation is key, be aware of what defenses they have used.

ELEMENTALIST:

• Be an tempest auramancer
• Time a shocking aura share for the following defenses they use:
• Blurred Frenzy
• Well of Recall
• Gravity Well
• Damaging shatters like Mind Wrack and Cry of Frustration
• When they get stunned burst them with whatever the team has in the way of condis, your contribution will probably be a magnetic grasp, leap over, burning speed into a drakes breath.

Why would you test who dies first and give one side a bunch of toughnesss through the settlers amulet.

Silverkey.2078:

messiah.1908:

guys i remember the argument which bunker is better , guard, ele or mesmer

tell me what happend from beta till now which make bunker mesmer OP ?
nothing happen imo

what happens is that
1. viper runes
2. blocks and heals (rev shield)
3. heal buff (shiro heal skill)
4. evades
5. thief pushed out the meta comp

see what the abjured did against 2 bunker mes – amazing and hope other will follow
thief pressure 1v1 and +1
pressure the mesmer first to force cd and being useless afterwards for few sec.

when i playing my bunker mes i shout to my team to target the mesmer. after 1 min when he’s down its a surely win for us
if there are 2 mesmer we try to force split them between points so again facing only 1
and than power rev or thief can decap if the other mes is off point.

yes its boring to fight against them like any other bunker build (ele , guard, ranger)
yes they can res faster so take mercy rune with 20% res speed with your guard or ele.

anet needs to bring back the thief to be able to pressure again while not being too OP and you will see a shift with the current meta (although i see no wrong thief dominating 1v1 situation at all)

I have been playing ranked with my gf (condi reaper). Often, bunker chrono are not so bad. Unblockable CC, boon corruption and some call target for the rest of the team and he’s out. But I think it is mostly because many currently play it while they don’t know mesmer that well, and also, the support it brings is only really strong in a coordinated team.

Of course, I do play bunker chrono myself, because let’s admit it, this is still currently our best chance of winning in leagues.

A lot of people are going to get burned as they go up in mmr. I think most of the people in this thread who bunker have already got into the instance where mechanical skills are not enough, especially the support builds.

As you implied a revenant can easily wait till after you have used the evade well. Blink to you and stun you for 3 seconds. A lot of prediction goes into support. They are expected in team fights but they lost the extreme mobility of portal or blink.

Vague Memory.2817:

If you check the PvP forums chrono barely gets a mention for complaints, because other classes can manage chronos. With the amount of unblockable skills added to the game even a bunker can be reduced to tears.

Not actually true. Now that the leagues are on people are increasing complaining about double bunker mesmer teams.

messiah.1908:

Daniel Handler.4816:

If you have more than one minute of swiftness you aren’t sharing enough. It means your getting too much swiftness from the signet, which means the signet is up and not beign used.

i get swiftness also from sigil swap 8-9 sec and i try to share boons when my team needs them the most. if my team is ok with health and able to pressure without me using it i wont proc it and if i do i try to proc it with CS so i have it back up again so after 30 sec i can build up 1 min boons. and remember other can give it to me

The sigils arent very neccesary, especially when you could be running energy sigils to aid in the bunkering. Chaos armor and storm alone provide enough swiftness to share. Speed runes don’t provide meaningful amounts of quickness. Energy provides much need extra dodges.

messiah.1908:

again you so pushed who created what and argue for 1 trait change which make a new build
common
i put open discussion as i want more ppl to test and comment not for me to get credit
i don care about credit as obviously as YOU so do

so i give you credit

you are the creator of all build.
you are the master. even so i didnt see any youtube/build post you make…..

these great ppl you talk about dont need credit as you think as they know they are great player and smart one who like to theorycraft. so stop to defend them on stupid argument who created what

as you see this is what i wrote so read it carefully

“so some ppl in this forum asked for help with chronobunker and i put short tutorial for beginners and other have been whispered me in game for help and asked me to put my version on the forum
i am not the creator of anything but i didnt see anyone using it so far (maybe there is a reason for that )”

than i guess you read it and said to yourself “i used the same build and he posted it RRRRR”
well ppl ask me freely and i like to help ppl and test with them their versions

regarding your critic

i didnt get what you saying about sharing enough. what do you mean if i have more than 1 min swiftness as to do with sharing

If you have more than one minute of swiftness you aren’t sharing enough. It means your getting too much swiftness from the signet, which means the signet is up and not beign used.

As for credit. I truthfully don’t care if you credit me. The point is that as much as you protest the youtube video still calls it your version. And as much as you think people like Chaos or whatever dont need credit. Its nice to mention them. I don’t think people realise im not talking about the post I am talking about the Youtube video, which takes credit and thanks no one.

messiah.1908:

Daniel Handler.4816:

messiah.1908:

usually bunker means support as in pvp there are 3 roles
dmg
sustain
support (bunker)

so poteto potato ….

i kinda disagree. alacrity is good for long cd skills which is usually utilities and support skills like
necro – main dmg coming from dagger AA (in RS he wont be enough time if taking dmg)
ele – air AA and fire AA while attunment with air and fire can be useful
guard – LB AA and TS (with 4 sec cd)
rev – AA and UA mainly
mes – maybe the only one with 3 skills dmg AA MB PB

so alacrity as you see used for utilities which in general have long ICD
while quickness is being useful for faster dmg which made by mainly AA

p/s: with every build i post i never claim some sort of ownership. i know all the mention ppl as sometime we talk (most of them us while i am eu so time difference)

The game has the roles dps, bunker, and support. Deal damage (burst or sustain), survival, support (offensive, defensive, utility).

Support is usually the secondary aspect of bunkers but it doesn’t have to be. Condi reaper or trap ranger make ineffective support characters but excel at bunkering. Bunkering just means never dying 1v1 and being able to sustain a 1v2.

Chronos alacrity bunker is a true bunker build with support as a secondary focus.
Mine is a true boon share support build with bunkering as a secondary focus.

Either Pyro can weigh in or you can chat with him in game. His can continually mitigate damage for 20+ seconds and give alacrity, which is more important than quickness for the majority of the meta.

Ps I saw that you didn’t take credit but also didn’t give credit. And given the number of posts I’ve made regarding the perma resistance rotation. And the amount of times I’ve talked about boon share in OMFG guild chat I was dubious you didn’t take notice. For that at least I am sorry.

Pps I have no problem if you run it. My problem was that you called it a bunker build and not a support build. If you want to true bunkering I encourage Pyro’s build.

i think we see things differently as bunker builds became more sustain and/or support. like engi or ele as home/far point holder. a true bunker is left out (see guards)

if we are talking about what actually roles than:
home/far point holder/ harasser – usually engi /druid ranger
roamer – thief /rev/ portal mes
team fighter dmg – necro, ele, rev, trap guard
team fight support – earth ele, guard, bunker mes

but that is off topic

also give credit to whom and what for
i think mesmer community already knows them and their contribution so i really dont know what were you expecting
we are usually 4-5 ppl who sharing ideas and posting them
my first post regarding bunker mesmer was before the first beta and i think only 1 person (cant remember who so sry man) post the same concept. also i was playing with it 6 month ago and w8ing for chorno to comes and see what can it gives and post 3 months ago.
i think pyro build was 2 month ago and build around bunkering mainly (no boon share)

so why are you changing the whole idea of this post and contribute nothing to it
and it seem you just bump in to gain attention for yours OMFG chitchat you have made in the past….

if you think the build concept is wrong say so . if you think its good say so.
putting few trait and utilities together will never make anyone’s build .

i just though this concept can handle better the shifting meta (conditions pressure)

peace and out

[s]https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/bunker-chrono-open-discussion-VIDEO/first#post5411645
Was a build you were simply testing, it was close to this.

About a month later you dropped the resistance from your builds and went with this.
http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?vhAQNAseWncfClfilqBGoBEgilej6cDKhWzMAugMqeUb1XF-TZxHAB1eKAQqMAK7PYwDAAgjAAA

Three days prior I had posted: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Swiftness-and-Boon-sharing-Herald-vs-Mesmer/page/2#post5488006 in the months after that I stressed resistance sharing and that build.
[/s]
The point is people can trace your posts and your builds. I don’t care if you credit me. But when you literally have all these posts in your history asking people for help with bunker mesmer and you mention none of them it is frustrating. You collaborated extensively over something as simple as the well of precogniton in the build, I just wished you credited any of these people. For goodness sakes you have a post titled “bunker chrono open discussion” at least give a shout out to Chaos. And don’t tell me you don’t claim credit, because you definitely do in the youtube video description.

As for the rest I will repeat the critque I gave in the first response to your post. Alacrity uptime is more crucial than holding on to shatters, so shatter often with as many clones as possible. Use f5 more, specifically the rotation I described. You dont need sigils that give quickness when they are replacing the energy sigils you will desperately need as a “bunker”

Your allies should have perma quickness, resistance, and protection in fight. If your swiftness boon is above one minute then you aren’t sharing enough.

messiah.1908:

usually bunker means support as in pvp there are 3 roles
dmg
sustain
support (bunker)

so poteto potato ….

i kinda disagree. alacrity is good for long cd skills which is usually utilities and support skills like
necro – main dmg coming from dagger AA (in RS he wont be enough time if taking dmg)
ele – air AA and fire AA while attunment with air and fire can be useful
guard – LB AA and TS (with 4 sec cd)
rev – AA and UA mainly
mes – maybe the only one with 3 skills dmg AA MB PB

so alacrity as you see used for utilities which in general have long ICD
while quickness is being useful for faster dmg which made by mainly AA

p/s: with every build i post i never claim some sort of ownership. i know all the mention ppl as sometime we talk (most of them us while i am eu so time difference)

The game has the roles dps, bunker, and support. Deal damage (burst or sustain), survival, support (offensive, defensive, utility).

Support is usually the secondary aspect of bunkers but it doesn’t have to be. Condi reaper or trap ranger make ineffective support characters but excel at bunkering. Bunkering just means never dying 1v1 and being able to sustain a 1v2.

Chronos alacrity bunker is a true bunker build with support as a secondary focus.
Mine is a true boon share support build with bunkering as a secondary focus.

Either Pyro can weigh in or you can chat with him in game. His can continually mitigate damage for 20+ seconds and give alacrity, which is more important than quickness for the majority of the meta.

Ps I saw that you didn’t take credit but also didn’t give credit. And given the number of posts I’ve made regarding the perma resistance rotation. And the amount of times I’ve talked about boon share in OMFG guild chat I was dubious you didn’t take notice. For that at least I am sorry.

Pps I have no problem if you run it. My problem was that you called it a bunker build and not a support build. If you want to true bunkering I encourage Pyro’s build.

This is my build (energy sigils should be used with battle on each set) However a lot of people in OMFG contributed. Rytlock talked to me about using the well heal instead of mantra. Alphathewhite and I debated usefulness. And then there was Pyro who had his own rival bunker build. Chaos created the original boon storm concept. Allisah made the video that taught me how to do the boon storm.

And so I will give you the same talk Pyro gave me when I explained this to him. Boons are not everything. For a bunker team support is secondary to staying alive. True bunkering will go to Pyro’s build because it has more mitigation. However if you want to side with team kentigem and not team pyro in the bunker wars this is up to you.

There is one main rotation and everything else is done based on judgement.

have two illusions out>f5 (while casting timewarp)>null field>SoI>shift back>[null field>SoI (until f5 is off cooldown)]

Not just you, your teammates should also have perma resistance, and the chaos armor boons. As well as perma quickness.

You should be constantly shattering for alacrity, chaotic persistence, and bountiful disillusionment.

But I cannot stress this enough. This is a team support build first, and a bunker build second. There is a reason why as you said you do not see it much. Alacrity is king. And it enhances dps more than quickness.

apharma.3741:

Daniel Handler.4816:

There is a lot bias going on in this conversation against the OP.
Take the french. “I can never hit them”

1337 Mesmorz: Well that sounds like your problem

Actual reason: He has almost perma chaos armor and a third of my attacks are blinded. The other others are either blocked, evaded, or invulned.

Mesmers are behaving like S/D thieves are people are not accustomed to it. Kill it the same way you would kill an S/D thief.

Old SD when it was the mandatory +1 decap 50% evade uptime beast or the less old SD when they changed flanking strikes and a few other things including fire and air?

The bunker Mesmer I don’t agree with comparing to SD simply because SD used the marauder (berserker back then) amulet and had that level of survivability. The current bunker Mesmer has all the things you mentioned but uses celestial amulet so isn’t as much of a threat, sure it survives a long time but put a mallyx revenant or signet necro in there and it’ll die swiftly.

I know some of NA is using the well of precog, shield marauder build but it doesn’t have high chaos armour uptime or protection with it so I don’t think you’re meaning that one.

Needless to say I think a lot of people are eagerly waiting for tonight’s pro league to see how well a lot of these builds perform against who. Reason being EU was essentially the vets vs the new guys last week which wasn’t really fair, we could have seen condiseth come out and still won most likely.

You can run bunker mesmer and zerker if you please. The tankiness is based in evasion, invuln, not in traditional stat dependent tankiness (healing power, toughness, or vit). There is nothing stopping Pyro from switching from sentinels to zerker, 20+ seconds of mitigation similar to the constant evade of S/D.

There is a lot bias going on in this conversation against the OP.
Take the french. “I can never hit them”

1337 Mesmorz: Well that sounds like your problem

Actual reason: He has almost perma chaos armor and a third of my attacks are blinded. The other others are either blocked, evaded, or invulned.

Mesmers are behaving like S/D thieves are people are not accustomed to it. Kill it the same way you would kill an S/D thief.

Ranged control and unique support.

All of the Elder Dragons have two domains. The most recent, Modremoth, had the domains of Plant and Mind. Do we know yet what Bubbles second domain will be?

AlphatheWhite.9351:

Daniel Handler.4816:

Illusion creation takes precedence over everything else. The mesmer is suppose too be empowered to create 100% of the time on skill use and destroy 100% of the time on shatter. Don’t remove control because it doesn’t fit your playstyle.

How often have you ever found yourself needing that clone right now while having 3 phantasms up?
It’s not a situation one finds oneself in by accident :P

You’ve invented a philosophical imperative that doesn’t make any sense.
There is, in fact, little practical reason for your rule to be true, given the narrow circumstance under discussion.

I would direct you to dastions post above me. Also I am fairly certain this would mess up the coding for most of the clone skills.

Illusion creation takes precedence over everything else. The mesmer is suppose too be empowered to create 100% of the time on skill use and destroy 100% of the time on shatter. Don’t remove control because it doesn’t fit your playstyle.

They added snap ground targetting. You don’t even have aim them anymore. You can run and hit targets targets behind you for infinite kiting.

LumAnth.5124:

For the Chronomancer,

While I disagree with what the Mesmer has become in gw2 compared to gw1 (both mechanically and thematically), they have had the power to slow and speed up since the original.

Although there were more mental based skills in gw1 (Panic, Frustration, Sum of All Fears, Migraine) than gw2, the Mesmer still had reality warping powers.

Fast Casting— “Mesmers have the ability to cast spells quickly, which can make all the difference in the heat of battle.” It is (was) the primary attribute of the Mesmer profession. Then we have the fast casting skill “Stolen Speed” which is basically the gw1 version of Time Warp.

It wouldn’t surprise me that Chronomancy is a more concentrated and refined version of fast casting. Well of Recall could be an area concentrated version of Persistence of Memory and Gravity Well could be a powerful version of Psychic Instability (although that sounds more like mental magic than reality warping, and in my opinion, Psychic Instability > Gravity Well mechanically)

I have no problem with theory. Indeed many of the theores on this forum are plausible. The issue is a disconnect between the writers and the fans. I want to know how something happened but it seems that aren’t interested in expanding upon old lore. Its possible they are saving a profession reveal for story events. My hope is that they are. But I wouldn’t be surpised if they forget about profession lore.

Oh thank God. Let me investigate. Google was worse than iWarden at hitting it’s target.

Does anyone know? Has anyone seen him recently? They nerfed PU get some engies in here he might be using LoS between stealth chains.

It’s been more than five minutes.

Dondagora.9645:

It is not the best revive nor does it have the most gracious of cooldowns, thus how about simply making it faster to cast so that we might revive with greater reliability?

It already is the fastest revive skill. And has the longest range. That range can be artificially extended because you can begin precasting with a person who downs on your portal exeunt and cast it as your portal. They jump in the exit portal and are now 5000 distance away to self res after they go downed again.

It gives essentially gives people a mix of vapor form and vengeance. The only reason why it is not widely taken is because it takes up a utility slot and is a conditional revive.

Maniacal Persistence is the only useful grandmaster in malyx. It’s best use is when paired with Invocation to give substantial crit chance to carrion or valyrkie builds.

I find the elite the worst part of the stance, it’s radius is too small and you paradoxically have to stop people from moving to apply more torment.

The other parts of the stance are fine, they accomplish what they are intended for. The stances was clearly balanced between all the game modes.

Jordo.5913:

yup

usual rotation for me is…

Pre-Fight have all 3 Glint utilities active

Opening: F2 > Axe 4 > Sword 3 > Glint AoE Breath > Glint 5 x2 > AA til Sword 3 > Sword 3

Legend Swap > Shiro Heal > Shiro Imp Odds > AA til Glint is off CD > Legend Swap > F2 > All Glints Utilties upkeep > Glint AoE Breath > Sword 3 > Repeat

Use Glint Elite on CD or save it for break bars….Jade Winds can be used instead of Imp Odds after legend swap for break bars as well

Glance over how you describe your rotation. Because impossible odds and f2 cannot be active at the same time.

Um. Actually they don’t get even this. Run minionmancer now in PvE and you just eat everything. Otherwise for soloing dungeons that will go to the scrapper now with its strong aoe, blocks and instant stealth, it carries reflects as well.

I’ll correct an earlier statement now that I remember the context is PvE. There is no problems with mesmers boon share when glanced at in a bubble.

Out of this bubble mesmer falter at maxing dps while still performing the boon share role.

In speed runs alacrity is the end all when it comes to maxing mesmers damage (through boosting other’s). Anything that detracts from that role must be justified.

Taking inspiration over Illusions is not justifiable because of f5 . Taking it over chaos is not justifiable because of sharing quickness. And you won’t take it over chrono.

There is no issue with boon sharing. Mesmer can give every boon in the game still. And with proper traits.

F5 + time warp + null field + SoI + F5 + null field + SoI

Gives 50 seconds of resistance to allies. 20 seconds later you null field + SoI then 20 second later again, then 20 seconds later you redo the combo.

Perma resistance and with staff perma protection for allies. With larger uptime on any of the boons you get from chaos storm or armor.

PopeUrban.2578:

EazyPanda.6419:

While it seems that you have made up your mind, I find a lack of feedback from thieves, so I though that I’d share some insight, from a thief’s perspective.

As a thief main, I’d have to agree, mesmer are in a better spot for Pvp at the moment. And thieves arguably have a higher skill floor compared to mesmers, especially in Pvp and and the Jungle.
Mesmers have similar, if not higher bursting capabilities, has access to stealth, yet does not rely on it, and generally brings more to the table compared to thieves.

Thief is a class that grows on you, not so much as a pick up and play class. As a thief, you are required to not only know your own skills, but to know your opponent’s as well, since you cannot just press a series of buttons and win a fight. Make one mistake and you are dead, while needing to play almost perfectly to win against other classes.

It is a high risk, mediocre reward class, but as stated before, it is a class where you have to play reactively. New thieves are certain to die, and are expected to put in hundreds of hours to be regarded as decent thieves.
When two players of the same skill level are dueling, the thief is expected to lose. Yet, a skilled thief is a monster to fight against, and can turn the tide of a match very quickly.

In PvE, unskilled thieves spend more time on the ground, or on their shortbow which deals low damage, or retreating out of range of the boss after taking a hit, and can be considered a liability to the party. On the new maps, the thing that made thieves meta, group stealth, is not as important as they are in dungeons.

After saying all this, why do I keep playing my thief? Simply because it is fun. The freedom of not being restricted by cooldown, and the feeling when you beat the odds.
No zerker in the new jungles? My daredevil is proudly wearing zerker gear and surviving decently.
Thieves die easily in group content? My thief is still soloing Mai Trin after my party wiped and is trying to respawn.

Thieves are really bad in Pvp? Yet I’m still at the top of the scoreboard at the results screen. (a rare thing these days I’d have to admit)

Thieves are bad in group fights in WvW? Tell that to the enemy zerg’s elementalists and necros that are on the floor, leaving the enemy with no way to deal damage. (again. A rare thing to be honest).

What I’m trying to say is, find your own class. Some people found the game boring after a while simply because they are playing the wrong class. Try out all the classes. Once you fall in love with a class, the game just feels a lot more thrilling.

Agreed. Thieves aren’t “bad” per se, but they do require a much higher level of play for the same reward. They’re a high skill floor class. A bad mesmer will still probably live and might kill some people or mobs. A bad thief will simply die.

I brought a new player in to the game afew weeks ago, and he decided, against my warning, to roll a thief for pvp, having never played GW2 before. he died instantly and decided the game was dumb. after a week I suggested he try an easier class to start off with, and gave him a warrior build to try. After which he decided he liked the game and hated the thief.

Meanwhile I play thief almost exclusively and do decently with it (within its sadly still to strict limits) in pvp and generally outlast or outdamage other party members with it in pve.

The skill floor of thieves and mesmers are both high. Survavibility and the skill floor are not the same concept. The combat method of mesmers just allow for more survival since we are a ranged class first and foremost. Skill ceiling gives the reverse situation. A mesmer has to deal with long skill combos that contain multiple instant skills. A thief can reinitiate a combo if they mess it up. A mesmer cannot. Mesmers have to deal with positioning of illusion and complicated mechanics in order to deal damage. Mesmers were given some instant stuns to make the process of landing shatters easier, but it did not change the skill ceiling.

However I agree that thief has a higher skill floor for base survival.

@faceless ambiguity and mystery go hand in hand, what matters is the cynicism of the audience. Magic is “immaculately explained” in the what, but not the how. After all these years we don’t know how a person casts a spell beyond that they can do it continuously and it can harm them if they are unprepared. They toss us a bone and tell us guardians use faith, but the other classes?

I’ve been trying to make a build that kills through pulmonary impact. Going from dp to sw p to pp to staff. All have had mediocre results. Does anyone have a good pulmonary impact build for PvP?

Help would be appreciated.

Auras and buffs are unavoidable. Evasion only means you are avoiding an attack. If you choose to hit a person with a electrified shield, at some point your sword is making contact and you will be stunned. Same applies to retaliation etc.

ThFH.6048:

Yes seems the obvious answer but until Winter’s Day hits Tyria I say no. I have hopes that with the release of Winter’s Day (also the original release of the statcombo) they will balance the stats and also finally release an ascended recipe for it.

This as well. However this is not a change that needed to wait. Giver armor was been rendered useless vs minstrel.

KellionBane.4956:

Giver Weapons are currently over valued for Condition Duration based on new Expertise stat.

A Giver 2h weapon gives 20% condition duration.

While, a Viper 2h weapon gives 7.5% condition duration.

Armour… Not so much.

However Giver armor gives a flat 1% while minstrel armor can range any between 2 and 6%+ per armor piece.

Levetty.1279:

We have to consider every Chrono skill and ability and then compare how they do more damage then one DH skill?

Yeah I believe the balance team does that.

Once is ranged the other is not. They balanced range wells vs melee traps.

Giver was three stat combo that gave either boon duration or condition duration.

With the addition of concentration and expertise the four stat combos that include boon duration and condion duration eclipse three stat combos of the stats. This makes no sense.

Did anet forget that Giver existed?

Levetty.1279:

Yeah you shouldn’t be able to do that much damage and CC.

looks at Dragonhunter

Oh…ok…

Um. But it does more damage than the dragon maw? You have to consider that with alacrity and f5, two gravity wells would do the cc of maw and more than two times the damage with less cd.

AlphatheWhite.9351:

Daniel Handler.4816:

Hybrid condi will never be meta because we don’t have better access to burn. And because our main condis require actions to have increased damage.

Hybrid condi will never be meta because some people cry foul every time someone suggests a way to improve the situation for it.
(hint, you’re channeling those people right now).

Damage increases in PvE will just make it OP in PvP and WvW where the enemy players will move and attack. If my math is right then a stack of confusion and a stack of torment together do more damage than a stack of burn on a player that is moving and attacking.

We need taunt.

AlphatheWhite.9351:

Daniel Handler.4816:

Just because you don’t see value in a trait doesn’t mean it’s worthless. Chaos also had to use the trait to see its value.

I’m not giving up powerful utility for something I could get from a battle sigil.

I don’t see where you get off saying hybrid isn’t viable unless you are talking about PvE. Which was just given a boost in that staff clones live longer.

Please don’t use viable when you mean meta or say things about knees, it just makes you seem like the common exaggerators who infest this forum.

I am definitely talking about PvE.
And I’m certainly not calling it worthless. I’m saying that it’s not as important.
In Fantasy football (first year playing, hah), it would be equivalent to downgrading your Wide Receiver slightly in order to upgrade your Tight End significantly.

It’s useful, but it’s not the only option for the counterplay it enables. I’m suggesting that if we swap it out, it wouldn’t make any currently viable/meta builds unviable/nonmeta, but it could make currently nonviable/nonmeta builds viable/meta, albeit in a different segment of the game.
And that’s exactly the kind of tradeoff that I’m all for.

The number of builds and situations where reflection is useful eclipses the number where 150 conditions damage is a must. The multiple sources we have can be taken together to provide high reflection uptime, or separately because we don’t have as single trait line providing this bonus.

Hybrid condi will never be meta because we don’t have better access to burn. And because our main condis require actions to have increased damage.

Damage is not a balanced solution. Any increase in stats that make torment/confusion usable in PvE will be too OP in PvP/WvW.

We need taunt. It we had reliable taunt then we would be on the same damage tier as burn users. We need the enemy to move and attack.

What skill combos have you come across?
I’ll start.

Forced engagement>punishing sweep

At this point in the story it implied that Marjory and Braham are the first Reaper and Dragonhunter. We believe Rytlock is the first Herald.

Will Rox become a Druid?
Will Caithe become a Daredevil?
Will Taimi become a Scrapper?
Will Kasmeer become a Chronomancer?
Will Zoja become a Tempest?
Will they introduce another warrior to show us Berserker?

And how?

AlphatheWhite.9351:

Daniel Handler.4816:

Evasive mirror has its uses during extended combat with ranged characters. Its not that we are hurting for reflects. Its that for dragons hunters you don’t want to get close enough to blind with a shatter.

I realize that, but it’s not like we’re out of options to deal with Dragonhunters. Ineptitude applies blind on evade, and we agree that we have plenty of other reflect sources to fall back on.
I’m simply saying that the loss of this particular tool wouldn’t be all that much of a loss, while a precision->condi trait would go a long way to making hybrid condi a viable build, without cutting off the existing condi builds at the knees.

Just because you don’t see value in a trait doesn’t mean it’s worthless. Chaos also had to use the trait to see its value.

I’m not giving up powerful utility for something I could get from a battle sigil.

I don’t see where you get off saying hybrid isn’t viable unless you are talking about PvE. Which was just given a boost in that staff clones live longer.

Please don’t use viable when you mean meta or say things about knees, it just makes you seem like the common exaggerators who infest this forum.

Are we ignoring sharper images? Because sword clones don’t die as easily anymore.

This is in comparison to scepter which has a slower autom

Xyonon.3987:

I didn’t say “remove” the sound. I said “change it”. I play with sound so I can hear skills before they happen, with a headset even to hear WHERE they come from. Sound is important for me, yet it’s not good if my main profession with such a high alacrity uptime sorta hurts my hearing :/ I really love all the mesmer sounds, alacrity is an exception tough.

Doesnt your hearing get hurt by Mesmer portal or by chaos storm or by the prestige? I think the problem is that you are hearing this one too long, I assume you would have the same problem if you stood next to a portal for too long.

I see no problem with them lowering the sound other than perhaps artistic issues. It telegraphs enough anyway with the flames.