Guild Wars 2

By far the most elegant solution to dealing with damage spikes would be to have a critical strike chance and/or damage reducing stat. The easiest solution would be to couple it into Armor granted by armor pieces and auras/boons. This creates a cap that can be hit by boons and armor pieces and grants warriors and guardians the higher passive damage reduction over leather and cloth wearing professions that they should have given their heavier and harder to get through armor. This actually allows Leather and Cloth wearing professions a chance to close that gap through any auras that provide extra armor. Burst gets to remain where it’s at right now but takes huge steps back by merely changing that one thing, it also strengthens condition damage a little since it’s currently not affected by critical chance/damage OR armor/toughness.

In the essence of dealing with PvE I cannot recall being critically hit by a NPC so I think a change such as this wouldn’t negatively impact PvE survivability (trivializing encounters thus making content too easy and boring because of it).

It’s dependant on play style and what you think you’ll be doing mostly. For instance, for solo holding a point I think that 0/20/20/0/30 is a very strong Shatter build that maximizes it’s usage of defensive shatters while still being able to burst a weaker opponent down hard. The Staff CD reductions give more survivability and often you will just kite people away from the node you are at, alternatively for holding that point since you aren’t taking the pistol CD reduction trait you can run a focus and just Into the Void them off a point, follow up with swap to staff for AoE on the point discouraging them standing on it, etc etc etc.

For taking a point or running with a team I feel that 20/20/0/0/30 is stronger as it has more damage and will still be able to use the shatters defensively in a pinch. Utilities vary from build to build. All are good, just depends on what you like to do. I tend to find myself trolling the opposing team often, just grab their attention and use the more defensive build to abuse Phase Retreat, Blink, Decoy, Null Field, and Dodges along with Energy runes for weapon swapping and focus to just kite the enemy team around the map while my team does all the work. Only works against try hards, aka most sPvP players.

My preference would be to have the skill teleport you to the targets location and immobilize them, then allow you to swap positions with a clone created at your original starting location. Then it could be used defensively or offensively, and the ranged increased by 300 to 900 range, to match the range of the pistol weapons base range untraited. Also the CD on it should be increased to compensate for it’s increased power level, by around 20% probably. Longer range, stronger ability because it’s more versatile.

@Esorono: Sounds like a troll answer, hahahaha.

Go set up a duel with someone and find out. Best answer ever!

TL;DR – AoEs not affected by vertical axis, should be, programming pita for LoS

I believe the OP’s post was about how it seems to have no vertical restriction. In response to that, yes it appears that it will affect targets no matter how high over it they happen to be. Unfortunately, it’s traited reflection capabilities ARE limited to a certain height, having found that out first hand when dealing with harpies. Another point of interest here, almost all AoE abilities hit everything in their horizontal ranged regardless of vertical axis. A Necromancers Life Transfer (death shroud, 4 ability) definitely tried to kill me from under Clocktower the other day.

AoEs need a vertical axis distance attached to them in my opinion, perhaps higher than usual and deeper then might be normal, but with limits. Oh and you made mention of one other part of the ability, a lack of LoS. This is only half true, the mesmer needs to be LoS of the point at which they lay the ability, it’s functionality does in fact pass through walls and terrain though. There again however, the Guardians’ 5 ability of Greatsword does the same, once linked to someone even if they pass LoS of you it’ll pull them, whether it pulls them to you or not, it still tries to grab you.

Something interesting here might be the way they are programmed, and perhaps it has to do with latency issues as well, although I’d doubt the later as much as them being programmed without LoS concerns. Programming an ability like Into the Void and the GS Guardian ability properly would probably be quite challenging though, it’s not a common ability in games right now. However, I’d really like to be able to use my abilities while off the ground though, mid jump blinks would both look really cool and allow you to get to some great vantage points in the game.

@Cathaoir: I agree, don’t nerf Mesmer, Buff Moa. Both sides of the ability, reduce it’s CD, but give people basically a free get the kitten out of dodge ability. In fact, make them 100% invulnerable for all I care, for 10 seconds, but let me use it every 90 seconds. NOW THAT is a button to push, both offensively for keeping someone out of a fight and defensively for holding a point till reinforcements come. Man oh man, that’d be fun times right there! Doubt there’d be quite as much QQ about how getting Moa’d wins the fight then, it just pauses the fight for 10 seconds, at least 1v1. (which btw, might still be really strong since it’d give you a burst combo, Moa, burst combo up again if timed well, for after the 100% invulnerability)

Having used Phase Retreat a few hundred times last night I think it can be said that it almost never teleports you under the map. The exceptions seem to be if you are in the middle of a knockback when you Retreat.

As to it’s new functionality and working as it reads, teleports me away from my target, I love this change. When I originally started using the ability back in beta, it didn’t do what it does now and didn’t make sense to me as to why. Now that it functions as it reads it’s much easier to reliably use it to do what I want provided I’m positioning correctly. A straight blink backwards is far less helpful then blinking directly away from a target in my opinion.

Personally, I’ve found that every build wants to run the 5 point passive Illusionist’s Celerity, and this leads to a 5 point detriment to our allotted 70 points. Removing it and baseline reduction of the illusion generating abilities seems natural, what to put in it’s place is the question.

I feel a daze on clone death could be a good fit in that spot with a 15 second internal CD with a 1 second daze. Enough to disrupt melee range channeled AoEs but not often enough to make us unkillable to melee.

I enjoyed the videos, a good overview of the class and excellent information to be gathered from them. I have noticed a lot of “um. . . <insert appropriate information>” and “uh. . . <insert more information>”, from a speech standpoint it is slightly distracting and actually causing your videos to take longer. It’s nothing negative and I wouldn’t say I could do better but if you have the capability perhaps recording what you are going to say at various times and editing it to fit with your video might make things a bit smoother and the information a little more comprehensible.

Thanks for taking the time to make the videos and please keep up the good work.

I’ve run a Sword/Sword Mesmer Melee build with 0/20/20/20/10 for some time now and found that Sword Mesmer has one of the highest defensive capabilities in the game. The access to Staff trait plus all the ways to proc the fields for Chaos Armor along with Signet of Inspiration is a ton of Aegis procs. The build can choose to run either Feedback or Phantasmal Defender per your tastes, the damage is definitely considerably lower than other builds, and it’s almost completely focused on reducing damage taken and utilitizing all the available free blocks and dodges.

I run with:
20 Dueling for the Clone generation, bleeding application, and sword CD reductions.
20 Chaos for the extra toughness, Staff CD Reduction, Protection from Regeneration procs, as well as the 3% per Illusion damage reduction.
20 Inspiration provides a good chunk of health along with Medic’s Feedback, Phantasmal Healing, and the Glamour Mastery
10 Illusion gives 20% Illusion summoning reduction, and a variety of supportive 10 point traits, currently been trying Illusionary Invigoration

I run this with a full loadout of Beserker or Rampagers crafted Exotics (I’m 400 Tailoring) I like Beserker gear a touch better for the burst damage it provides and the build crits plenty. Full Ruby Crafted exotic jewelry adds to the damage I do. I can always go to a full glass cannon build for a very minimal cost but this build provides me the strongest pick up group run survivability. I fully suggest this build to anyone playing a Mesmer and not worried about doing the most damage ever, winning is what I’m most concerned with. Also, if you are like me, then you find yourself leading the group and therefore will be pulling (I use various illusions to pull then dodge a couple times to make more clones to keep the group coming to us).

A note that should be touched on here is, Medic’s Feedback is VERY strong, almost too strong to be honest, it really makes many fights completely trivial.

Sollanon.8450:

Time Warp – 3 Colorless mana, 2 blue mana.
Sorcery
Target player takes an extra turn.

How is it OP? Costs so much mana =|

It’s not the Warp that’s OP, it’s managing to cast it 2 times with Pyromancer’s Ascension that’s the problem. . . I mean. . . it requires some set up, but I’m telling you, this can go infinite with a regrowth effect, which is in the same format as Ascension. (actually about 20 times over in the same format)

I take all the rest of the turns! I WIN!

More on topic though, Time Warp requires a great deal of skill to use appropriately, and it’s only 10 seconds. There are abilities in the game that make you immune to CC for 20 seconds. . . need I say anymore? Overpowered is a perspective, I don’t think that Hundred Blades is overpowered, except in PvE where it’s simply doing too much damage to the NPCs who won’t move out of it or stun/daze that warrior.

Normally I don’t post on subjects such as these. . . especially since I think a universal token system generally leads to overfarming of a certain dungeon, however, there is something not being said here that I feel is rather relevant.

I could care less about the token system as it is right now, except for one minor issue. . . They take up bag space. Can a tab in the collectibles be made for this? Or a Soulbound Collectibles window be created?

I have 4 different token types taking up space in my bags that I’d like to get out but would really not have to go to my bank to find out how many I have when deciding which dungeon my friends and I are going to run for that evening.

According to Oct. 1st patch notes the cooldown on Illusionary Riposte should be affected by the trait Blade Training, however now has a 14 second cooldown while showing 12 seconds according to the tooltip. Further, it appears that utilizing the Blade Training Trait brings this cooldown to approximately 11.2 seconds, which would mean it is in fact being affected by the Trait, but not by the passive bonus from Illusionary Celerity.

Since it creates an illusion, it should in fact be affected by Illusionary Celerity if I am understanding the passive trait correctly. (and would match the tooltip I’m reading of 12 sec cooldown with Illusionary Celerity)

Pretty sure MH Pistol should have been included or developed to replace Scepter. I like Scepter it’s just not in the right place on a Mesmer, and in fact, doesn’t even feel like something a Mesmer would use.

As someone mentioned,
1 chain with a bleed
2 evasive ability (I like throwing a clone behind me with a swap position ability, reverse sword like)
3 AoE ability (I like the idea of firing a single bullet and it splitting into 5 shots after a short distance, don’t feel a need for a slow at all)

Also as someone else mentioned, this won’t happen any time soon. Maybe not even until a further expansion. /shrug. We can dream though.