Guild Wars 2

Ryuujin.8236:

Nuka Cola.8520:

“this is what i hear” don’t you have a brain and think for a sec? On a single target three phantasms will outdamage any class and for mobs of enemies you have shatter which deals tones of aoe damage so i dunno how could anyone even imagine mesmers having low dps.

Think about the rate of attack for those phantasms, their rate of attack is much slower than other classes heavy hitters, so while you might see 3 phantasms hitting for 8-9k each, the combined DPS of you and your phanties is still below or comparable to the DPS of other classes – and setting up 3 phantasms has a very long set up time (assuming 3 duellists, you’re talking best part of a minute), whereas a warrior can head-down-sustain DPS from first contact

Compare the attack damage to attack rate. Even in a vacuum elementalist’s lightning hammer does over twice the DPS of of your mainhand sword (our highest DPS attack)

Phants attack slow and likely only get to attack once. Even with signet of illusions and the 20% health trait, a phantasm is under 13k health, aka they will be one shot by most big boss attacks, and they don’t dodge. I consider phantasms to be burst damage rather than DPS because the cooldowns are long enough on them that you can’t reliably always have both phantasms up, let them attack once, shatter, and then resummon both of them immediately to have them have uptime (which would be ideal). Anet seems to think that they’ll be sustained dps because they’ll stay alive and continue to attack every 5-8s, but not when they die to boss aoes and cones.

Now in the ideal situation that he phantasms get completely ignored or aren’t affected by boss attacks, 3 phantasmal warlocks attacking every 5.7s for 16k damage (such as in world bosses where there’s enough people that every single condition is up on them), yes, that’s a lot of dps. That’s just not the reality of most situations where phantasms pop the moment a big aoe everyone else dodges happens.

colesy.8490:

Mesmers have some nice burst but their dps in my experience seems to be pretty trash. Still, on bosses where you have people spamming vulnerability you can normally get numbers like 7k off a duelist, 8k off a zerker or like 12k-ish off a warden, and since it’s pretty easy to set up phantasms, you can have your phantasms dropping that damage while you sit there with your sword doing blurred frenzy and autoattack.

Don’t run 10/30/0/30/0. If you’re doing Phantasm, run 10/10/0/25/25 or 10/15/0/25/20 for maximum dps (second one for solo, bleed stacks will help out).

Why? Points in dueling gives you faster sword and pistol cooldowns, phantasmal fury and extra precision and up to 30%+ crit damage. Full inspiration lets you give your phantasms more HP, quicker focus cooldowns and reflects and shorter cooldown on glamour skills. I’m not sure what you gain from 25 points in illusions besides illusionist’s celerity which I don’t think is worth investing in anymore.

I did some quick experimentation with 10/10/0/25/25 .. was not impressed. Yeah cds were a bit lower, but frankly losing 20% crit damage and 10% crit chance resulted in lower dps. Phantasmal haste is good on paper but reality is phantasms get destroyed in 1 hit by bosses so they rarely ever get a second chance to attack as it is.

They get to attack once, then you dodge/clone skill, and shatter.

Isn’t the case on trash always I suppose, and isn’t the case on world bosses.. but any dungeon/fractal boss just one shots a phantasm, and even the 20% more health trait doesn’t save them a lot of the time.

Is it any surprise when the main devs in charge of balance play Warrior and Guardian almost exclusively?

Blackhat.4016:

I haven’t played my Mesmer since the last big patch but here is an interesting video I found:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXY5cIEr1Gk

Maybe this helps. The damage is extremely high imo and you’re also ranged which means it’s really safe. Not sure if something changed since the video was released but the basic idea should still work.

That’s old enough to be pre nerfs. Also being ranged has lower dps than melee.

Esplen.3940:

Don’t run 10/30/0/30/0. If you’re doing Phantasm, run 10/10/0/25/25 or 10/15/0/25/20 for maximum dps (second one for solo, bleed stacks will help out).

If you’re doing shatter, run, for uber dps, 10/30/0/0/30 or 20/20/0/0/30.

Keep in mind, that base direct damage, Mesmers are the weakest in the game. Once you trait, you become really strong (your nuke isn’t quite as fast as thief/warrior, but you can down an enemy ridiculously fast, nonetheless).

Also, keep in mind that non-Shatter Mesmers CANNOT utilize Sigils of Force(or Night / XXX Slaying) because they have little to no direct damage.

Sigils of Accuracy are viable choices on Phantasm (and even Shatter) builds, since they are confirmed to work on Phantasms (and Clones) with a recent change.

Losing blade training and deceptive evasion is a lot, and you lose sharper images.

DiogoSilva.7089:

Renewing Stamina and all other equivalent traits for other professions, are extremely strong. Perma vigor means twice the dodges. This could very well be a 25th trait, and people would still want to pick it. Traits like these have been requested at the pvp forums to be nerfed someday.

It is powerful, but I have the same trait on my mesmer and I didn’t have to sacrifice a major trait for it.

Baladir.2736:

Avatara.1042:

Maybe it is the staff? When I use a staff, the Fire Shaman world boss ALWAYS go for me and only me.

Im guessing you are refering to the boss in the Fractals? I was in there last night with a staff and he ignored me enough I never had to worry. Only the occasional hit. Go figure.

I run staff ele and I was noticing the grawl shaman targetted me with nearly every fire arrow, I did a couple runs, one with full zerker gear, 1 with full soldier gear and 1 mixed. Didn’t seem to matter. When there were 2 eles, the aggro split better, or if I knew for sure a mesmer was full zerker gear I could wear full soldier’s and the aggro wouldn’t all be on me.

It seems that a couple boss mobs such as Lupi and the shaman have had their aggro tweaked to where it targets lowest health exclusively. Even in Soldier’s gear an elementalist will be fairly low health compared to warriors and mesmers.

Personally I think it’s a bad aggro system. Proximity should be considered, as then the same person won’t ALWAYS be the same distance away.

Focusing on one target goes against the mechanics the game was supposed to have where everyone would split aggro and everyone would have to avoid damage.

If only one person has to avoid damage it’s tanking… just.. using the squishiest character as the tank.

Either way.

I retired my ele from PVE for awhile unless this changes.

This is what I’ve heard, I only leveled my mesmer up to 80 recently but I hear it’s gotten nerfed a ton and the damage does seem kind of low, full zerker 10/30/0/30/0.

Karl McLain.5604:

I’m curious as well! Is there a possibility that you’re experiencing heavy latency? The skill itself has about a quarter second cast time (and cancels other skills that are already casting).

I’m curious as to why shooting someone in the head does the least amount of damage a thief can possibly do. It is literally their lowest damage weapon skill (tied with black powder)

So other people have noticed this too, and say their support guardians have to spend a ridiculous amount of their time dedicated just to keeping their elementalist up, so they stopped bringing the elementalist.

Apparently that’s the solution, stop playing your ele in Arah.

Cause that’s what I’m doing too.

Thanks Anet.

If I’m going to click through 25,000 things, I should at least get a title from it.

Why not bring back the GW1 title for drinking alcohol?

This isn’t really about which fractal, this is about the really dumb idea of a bunch of people who don’t even run fractals deciding which fractal we get to run. If you vote for Ellen because you want Thaumanova, I disagree with you, but fine, you’re voting on what fractal you want to run.

if you dont’ run fractals and are voting Kiel because you want cheaper waypoints (often not reading the part where it’s only 4 weeks) then no, not cool, I hope you end up spending triple the amount of “savings” on waypoints in repair bills.

It’s a pretty bad idea to have people who don’t even run fractals get to determine which fractal is made on the basis of “we like Ellen better, Evon is evil!” and cheaper waypoint costs, don’t you think?

I’m not looking forward to an inquest reactor fractal when I already run an inquest reactor dungeon nearly every day.

Onshidesigns.1069:

Devildoc.6721:

Iarkrad.8415:

Ancient history. Compared to Thaumanova, a largely unexplained event that rivals the rise of Kralkattorik for significance in recent history. What? Why? How?

We all know the story of Abbadon, and most importantly, we all know the full extent of it’s results and significance. Also, chaos magic could potentially be used to create temporal magitech for use in living story.

We already know what happened with Thaumanova. The Inquest were experimenting using the reactor to harness dragon energy, it overloaded and exploded. We already know the consequences of it, enemies from all around the world get teleported into it and a Golem tries to clean it up and brings in a huge fire elemental instead. The end.

The Inquest are doing the exact same thing at Crucible of Eternity. It is LITERALLY Thaumanova 2.0 but specifically designed to handle their experiments rather than just hijacking an existing reactor for it. It too is failing however and players and Destiny’s Edge/Pact have to shut it down.

Abaddon’s fall has sent ripples through history that have shaped the entire world of Tyria as we know it and we don’t know when those ripples will stop. Because Abaddon was cast down, the Gods left Tyria, leaving Orr to its own devices. Abaddon in the Realm of Torment created the Titans, the Titans gave the Charr the ability to perform the Searing, which allowed them to retake their ancient homeland of Ascalon, which set in motion an invasion that empowered the cult of the White Mantle and the Mursaat, and caused the cataclysm that sank Orr to the bottom of the sea and killed all its people. The Vizier of Orr was a servant of Abaddon, and it was he who cast the spell that caused the cataclysm. A servant of Abaddon also tricked Shiro Tagachi into murdering the Canthan Emperor years ago, creating the Jade Sea and Echovald (petrified) Forest. Shiro then became a servant of Abaddon after he was defeated as an envoy of the Mists by players. Abaddon attempted to break out from his prison and take over Tyria, he was killed, and a new Goddess rose up in his place. The Gods “went silent” when the Dragons awoke, conveniently, shortly after Abaddon’s final death (trust me, this is not a coincidence). The Dragons searched for artifacts related to Abaddon, so obviously there is some connection, but we don’t know what.

Vote Evon for something epic that has shaped Tyria’s history for thousands of years and continues to do so.

Vote Kiel if you want to just see the predecessor to CoE with consequences we already know about and repeat every day or in fact every half an hour if you want.

You don’t know the consequences of the reactors chaos energy in the Mists is.

WvW and sPVP take place in the mists, so at most, the fact that we can access the mists to fight in is tied to the reactor, otherwise nothing.

mtpelion.4562:

Devildoc.6721:

Remove your ego, keep your players in mind. Thanks.

I suppose it never occurred to you that perhaps they did keep the players in mind?
You only NEED 6 achievements for the meta. They added enough achievements for you to get the meta without doing a lot of things you dislike. If you dislike getting 2500 points then that achievement was not added for you, it was added for other people who like Southsun Survival.

What I’m getting from this thread is that you believe that options that you do not enjoy should be removed and only options that you do enjoy should remain. ArenaNet is going in the opposite direction (thankfully) and adding more options for getting the meta which allows players who prefer all types of gameplay to have a better shot at the meta.

All the rest can be completed in far fewer games of their respective minigames. Either the designer just has a huge ego and is pushing players into playing it far more than they normally would want to, or they have no idea what they doing and don’t understand their own scoring system and thought the average player would get triple digits per match. I’ve never seen anyone score triple digits.

Gasoline.2570:

I do hate the fact its 2500 pts but at least its mildly entertaining

I might actually enjoy it if it wasn’t so grindy for that achievement. But I can’t enjoy it, watching just how many games of it I’ll have to play to get it with a deadline hanging over my head for it. That and I don’t like a few aspects of the game itself

1. The Charlie Foxtrot at the beginning = person with the fastest ping wins, a couple people get all the supplies in the middle and probably get a few kills, starting a lot of other people off at a bad disadvantage.

2 = Getting respawned right in front of someone. I usally get respawned right in front of a person with a sword and instagibbed before I can do anything. That happens a few times and hey, now you’re picking up motes.

3. If you happen to be doing fairly well with regards to survival but aren’t the last man standing, your score is probably going to be bad, because when you DO die, there will be no motes for you to collect. The scoring system is just BAD.

The sheer fact of the matter is it’s pretty obvious the designer has a MASSIVE EGO PROBLEM and wants people to play an inordinate amount of times through his minigame.

Same kind of punk designer with an ego who can’t bear to know that his content got beat so he stealth buffs it in a patch to make it harder.

Every other temp achievement in the game can be done in no more than about 20 matches. Southsun survivor? At least 33 matches, probably more than 50 for most people. You have an August 6th deadline, so basically the egotistical kitten of a designer wanted to make sure people had to squeeze as much of his minigame in as possible rather than relying on people simply playing it because they enjoy it.

Remove your ego, keep your players in mind. Thanks.

HardRider.2980:

For the record. I love the way this game runs.. I came from a class based MMO – it got boring on a character after a while doing the same thing, same role.. Here i dont have tht.

Yes you do, everyone is just DPS.

Try running a “healer” in level 48 fractals, or a tank in level 48 fractals.

If you try, you’re as useless as teats on a bull.

Iarkrad.8415:

Ancient history. Compared to Thaumanova, a largely unexplained event that rivals the rise of Kralkattorik for significance in recent history. What? Why? How?

We all know the story of Abbadon, and most importantly, we all know the full extent of it’s results and significance. Also, chaos magic could potentially be used to create temporal magitech for use in living story.

We already know what happened with Thaumanova. The Inquest were experimenting using the reactor to harness dragon energy, it overloaded and exploded. We already know the consequences of it, enemies from all around the world get teleported into it and a Golem tries to clean it up and brings in a huge fire elemental instead. The end.

The Inquest are doing the exact same thing at Crucible of Eternity. It is LITERALLY Thaumanova 2.0 but specifically designed to handle their experiments rather than just hijacking an existing reactor for it. It too is failing however and players and Destiny’s Edge/Pact have to shut it down.

Abaddon’s fall has sent ripples through history that have shaped the entire world of Tyria as we know it and we don’t know when those ripples will stop. Because Abaddon was cast down, the Gods left Tyria, leaving Orr to its own devices. Abaddon in the Realm of Torment created the Titans, the Titans gave the Charr the ability to perform the Searing, which allowed them to retake their ancient homeland of Ascalon, which set in motion an invasion that empowered the cult of the White Mantle and the Mursaat, and caused the cataclysm that sank Orr to the bottom of the sea and killed all its people. The Vizier of Orr was a servant of Abaddon, and it was he who cast the spell that caused the cataclysm. A servant of Abaddon also tricked Shiro Tagachi into murdering the Canthan Emperor years ago, creating the Jade Sea and Echovald (petrified) Forest. Shiro then became a servant of Abaddon after he was defeated as an envoy of the Mists by players. Abaddon attempted to break out from his prison and take over Tyria, he was killed, and a new Goddess rose up in his place. The Gods “went silent” when the Dragons awoke, conveniently, shortly after Abaddon’s final death (trust me, this is not a coincidence). The Dragons searched for artifacts related to Abaddon, so obviously there is some connection, but we don’t know what.

Vote Evon for something epic that has shaped Tyria’s history for thousands of years and continues to do so.

Vote Kiel if you want to just see the predecessor to CoE with consequences we already know about and repeat every day or in fact every half an hour if you want.

Greyalis.2309:

I agree to your sentiment partially lately but think the problem could easily be solved by simply giving us new trait lines or abilities to find out in the world.

In other words, what your “archetype” is becomes more than just your profession or weapons but gets some flavor from factions in lore, or specific quests that will reward players with different abilities.

An easy way to do it would be to create unlockable trait lines in this fashion. Say you want to go full healer than there would be a specific quest line or content to unlock this trait line.

Perhaps the abilities don’t even change but the traits make you heal allies. Such as using your heal skill heals a targeted ally or perhaps even all your weapon skills turn into healing skills for allies—an example would be my mesmer healer can create a portal that heals allies that use it, or I can shatter illusions on allies to heal them.

I think what we have is fine it’s just the healing power is weak. You can’t heal through the damage of high end PVE, you either avoid it or you die. Long cooldowns on your self heals coupled with fairly weak supplemental group heals that don’t scale well with healing power ensure that healing will always play second fiddle to maximizing dps. Blasting water fields is an exception simply because 1 field can be blasted several times in a row to heal people to full despite each blast finisher heal being quite weak (about 1800 healing, not exactly impressive when you get hit for 13k)

folly dragon.4126:

Mike.7236:

Devildoc.6721:

I personally love the weapon based skill system and weapon swapping, only thing I’d change about it is make each weapon have a pool of available skills and allow you to select 2-4 skills (autoattack stays the same) from that pool of say 12 skills. This would also allow you to map your weapon skills in your desired order. I agree with this gripe and have friends who literally quit the game when Guardian greatsword keybindings were swapped on them, ruining their muscle memory for the skills.

While I don’t exactly share your enthusiasm for only having few abilities available at a time, I do think your suggestion is an excellent one, and would improve the game experience A LOT for someone like me!

Select weapon(s), then pick your 4 skills from the pool of skills the weapon(s) have. A simple and elegant improvement that works well, while staying entirely within the boundaries of what GW2 is! This would restore the sense of having a measure of control over your setup that I feel is sorely missing.

Perhaps we could all agree to sign this request, and someone could forward that request to the devs? Make a new thread about it, if you don’t like this one!

Exactly what I said but better put, however, an obstacle will be dual weapons. And dual skills. For most classes, it woukd be 2-3 for one weapon, 4-5 for the other. For Thieves, it would be 2 for main hand, 4-5 for offhand and we’ll, 3 wouldn’t change unless they also expanded to say 5 variants.

Yeah, dual skills for thieves would be the tricky part of that idea, but doable.

I think THAT adjustment to the weapon skills would be abetter core to base an expansion on than raising the level cap, for sure.

Mike.7236:

I know I promised to go away, but since I’m still thinking about these things, I might as well think out loud here…

…

I’ve never experienced anything similar in any other game, so I started thinking why that may be. And it suddenly struck me why a “WoW-style” setup where players manage a bunch of action bars themselves is superior to the single weapon-managed bar of GW2. It is not just superior in my personal opinion, it is OBJECTIVELY superior in a way I’d volunteer to prove in a lab (given sufficient funding)!

…

I don’t mind having an ability that goes against the grain of the class, but I want it over with my situational abilities, not hard-wired to numeric button 2!

And I especially want to be the one to make the decision, TYVM.

I’d disagree with most of this, I find that the less you are allowed to bring, the more important your build choices and strategy become.

You have to find a way to do a lot, with little

This was evident even in the first Guild Wars. You would lose matches of PVP, or wipe on an important mission, because you didn’t bring the right skill. There’s a lot of coulda shoulda woulda. If ONLY you’d brought a res skill, if ONLY you’d brought an interrupt, you could have done that mission without wiping. If ONLY you’d brought a speed boost or a knockdown you could have caught that monk and won the match.

When it’s all at your fingertips, you have fewer choices to make, it’s all then just hitting the right button. In a system like GW1, you have to know before the mission/dungeon, what skills you will probably need. In GW2, you can switch skills any time out of combat, but you have to think, before you start that boss fight, does it say they use conditions, does it say they use projectiles, does it say summons allies? Then you make your choices on weapons and utility skills based on that. If a mob doesn’t use projectiles but causes conditions and buffs itself, there’s little use for feedback but null field will be invaluable.

When I say there’s flaws to the game, I’m not meaning the weapon/skill system, I’m just talking about the meta of all dps that is caused by weak heal scaling, low base survivability, and the fact that everything is intended to be dodged

I personally love the weapon based skill system and weapon swapping, only thing I’d change about it is make each weapon have a pool of available skills and allow you to select 2-4 skills (autoattack stays the same) from that pool of say 12 skills. This would also allow you to map your weapon skills in your desired order. I agree with this gripe and have friends who literally quit the game when Guardian greatsword keybindings were swapped on them, ruining their muscle memory for the skills.

tovadaun.6304:

On top of Damage Avoidance, you’re also forgetting the awesome major factor they’ve introduced in GW2…
Be Responsible For Y.O.U.R.S.E.L.F!
I played WoW from Bkittenil March of this year. I was a dedicated Healer. I played all 4 Healing Classes: Druid, Priest, Shaman, & Paladin- all healing speced. It’s my preferred class. Played them through years of patches, changes to traiting systems, Dungeons, Raids (5 & 25mans) Every xpac.
I’m HERE now.
I’m here, and HAPPY now.
Never again will I have to completely stress out in a Raid because some asinine PUG Tank decided he wanted to pull a whole room and … I dunno… go get coffee. Never again will I have to deal with idiot DPS (read Hunters mostly -but not limited to!) who feel the need to kite 9k extra mobs from a /different/ room and then point the finger at Me when I couldn’t keep them alive and the tank while he was tanking a Raid Boss.
Because every single Profession in their own Skill Set is not only capable of Damage Avoidance -BUT!- Healing T.H.E.M.S.E.L.V.E.S. when Damage Avoidance is failed.
I agree w Tom.
Go back to WoW* or some other cut-rate crappy MMO, because GW2 is clearly not the game for your tastes. (*yes, this comment implies that IMO WoW is now, a cut-rate MMO)
Thank You ANet. I won’t Ever have to play WoW again. You have no idea what that’s worth to me. <3

Problem is, that leads to a lack of teamwork. There are classes that do necessary utility functions that aid the group, Guardian and Mesmer namely, in their projectile defense (wall of reflection, feedback, phantasmal warden), boons (particularly might from guardians, stability from guardians, banners from warriors, and quickness from mesmers), and boon stripping. Otherwise everyone would just run 5 warriors.

There is another core mechanic to this game that ruins the possibility of actually having diversity in end game content.

The Defiant buff on champion and legendary bosses.

Defiant means blindness is nearly completely ineffective, and interrupts have to be so redundant that nobody bothers with them, they just expect everyone to dodge, meaning that max dps is the way to go.

Defiant should not require multiple applications of CC skills to remove, only to have a pet or someone’s normal attack chain cause a cc state at an inopportune time. Sure, Anet thinks it’s great that maybe an organized group on voice coms can strip defiant in a coordinated fashion, but for the rest of us nobody bothers, because it ends up being more hassle than its worth.

Defiant needs to be changed. Instead of a stacked based buff that is depleted with additional CC applications, it should be a time based buff. Meaning you wouldn’t be able to interrupt all attacks because it’d go immune for a time after being interrupted, but you’d be able to interrupt enough that it might be worth taking an interrupt build. party member. Blindness should also be much higher than a 10% miss chance. 10% miss chance on content where getting hit once might kill you instantly means you can’t chance it. You’re never going to stand there at a blinded champion or legendary mob and not dodge a telegraphed attack confident that it will miss. Blindness should be rolled into cc effects, so that after being blinded, a boss can’t be blinded or cc’ed again until the buff wears off.

I understand the design of not just wanting bosses to be CC’ed and blinded to death, but the current solution pushes things too far the other way and makes control a completely neglected party member role.

Valadin.5642:

So, the versatility of each class is what ANet focused on. I absolutely hate being a healer, but I love the idea of a Holy Warrior/Paragon. Hence, I play a Guardian, but it means I don’t have to be confined to healing and tanking. I can still dish out the dps whenever I want to. And in a traditional mmo, my Thief would be only damage. But instead, I can play a damage control/support Thief instead. So IMO, they [ANet] don’t need to make any changes to the classes to make them more “Unique”, and by doing that, making the game less Unique, and more like WoW or SWTOR.

Yeah, I don’t like the idea of going to trinity designated roles, I like that classes are flexible and can do multiple things. I do however wish that healing power was more effective (since every heal but self heal is aoe, the effectiveness of healing power is very low). But still, even if they made healing power very powerful, high end content groups wouldn’t want you speccing or building for healing, even if there was a dedicated healing class, groups wouldn’t want to take it because they feel you should dodge everything and never get hit and never need heals. In fractals at high levels, being hit at all is basically fatal, you can’t heal through it. In speedruns of dungeons, a healing class slows the run down.

A dedicated healing class is not the answer to the dilemma of GW2’s DPS only meta.

The problem originates not from a lack of holy trinity, but rather from the fact that all damage can be avoided, and is therefore EXPECTED to be avoided. This results in dps stats being the only thing viable. Because you should not be building tanky to take hits, because you are expected to avoid every single hit and never have to take a hit. The same rationale means you should not spec to heal, because every player is expected to avoid every single hit and never need to be healed. The reality is that people do get hit, people do get downed, and people do need heals, but trying to get into groups in high end content when you’re specced to be able to take hits, or heal hits, is a no go.

In games where there isn’t this expectation to avoid ALL attacks, tanks build to be able to take hits, they’re expected to get hit, and so they need to be able to survive being hit. Likewise healers are expected to heal the damage done and so they build to be able to heal well and efficiently. This paradigm shift is caused by one very important feature in GW2’s mechanics: Invincibility frames on dodging. If dodge simply quickly moved you in a direction, but did not grant invincibility frames, it would not completely avoid some attacks, a cleaving sword swing might still hit someone dodging to the side rather than backwards, subject alpha’s aoes would still do damage to people in melee range dodging at the last second, as they would still be in the circle.

Invincibility frames allow for you to completely avoid all damage during the animation, whether a sword is going right through your body or not. Invincibility frames allow you to negate damage from a targeted non projectile spell.

Invincibility frames create the the state of game where everyone is fragile, where if you do get hit by bosses, you might get one shot (though part of that is due to the downed system as well, because you CAN recover from downed, it necessitates making you fragile along with the rationale of because you CAN avoid any hit coming at you you have to be fragile)

Without invincibility frames, the game would get much harder, people would not be expected to avoid every single attack, damage would be anticipated, and builds other than max dps zerker only would be a part of the meta.

But as long as every attack is fully avoidable, all you will ever see at the top PVE content is #YOLO #SWAG #FULLZERKS #MLGPRO #DPS

Now if invincibility frames WERE removed, other steps would have to be taken on base survivability, mob outgoing damage, and healing power scaling, to make building for healing power viable

I like that several classes have the potential to be a support/healer role, it would be a bad move I feel for Arenanet to move to having a dedicated healing class, due to the fact that then content would be built with having that class in mind, which leads to that class being NECESSARY to run the content. This is not what Anet wanted, nobody wants to spend a lot of time “LF1M Monk…. please… we’ve been waiting for hours… are there ANY healers?”

But think about that.. lack of dedicated healers is not what creates the all dps only meta. It’s the expectation that you can dodge everything.

blud.8174:

It keeps them from attacking your crystal carriers and keeps them from going and getting crystals also.

A team with 3 people going after crystals with 2 people keeping their opponents occupied in the center is going to have more achievements earned and more games won than a team with 1 person going for crystals and 4 people fighting those 2 people in the middle.

I’m going to spell it out reaaaaallllllllllll simple for a lot of people who are utterly clueless.

There is no achievement granted for fighting non crystal bearers.

Thanks

Target the crystal bearers, go after the crystals and carry, that’s how you win, that’s how you get achievements. Fighting in a ball in the middle does nothing.

LumAnth.5124:

Did you forget this is a FRACTAL?

All of them are inaccurately based on past events. You certainly will not be getting some of the answers you asked in this thread!

Same goes for Thaumanova!

That is an interesting thought. Maybe the “fall of Abbadon” fractal will have you playing as Margonites in an alternate reality where Abbadon won.

DJRiful.3749:

Rapier is coming…

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1iwvp9/anet_dev_confirms_rapier_probably_next_patch/

I like that, I guess the animations part is why it didn’t make it in this patch. The mesmer skills can go with a rapier if you just have 3 thrusting animations rather than 2 slashes and a thrust, and then blurred frenzy made into a series of thrusts rather than slashing all around.

Heck, what I’m picturing in my head reminds me of this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPbxOimrjYg#t=3m27s

hey, don’t hate, one of my favorite JRPG’s in a long time.

I could just see my mesmer “Un deux trois!”

Thief also has 2 slashes and a thrust for their sword autoattacks. Infiltrator’s strike is a thrust, flanking strike’s first hit is with the dagger, and the second hit (larcenist’s strike) is a sword thrust. Pistol whip is all slashes so it’d need adjusting

Guardian’s flashing blade is a thrust after the teleport,, and again it’s 2 slashes and a thrust for the autoattack animation, and the 3rd skill is a sweries of slashes (with projectiles)

Warrior is different (though it used to be the same) with the autoattack chain being 3 slashes in different directions (final thrust used to be at the end), savage leap is again, a movement towards the target and a thrust, final thrust is a thrust, and flurry is a series of slashes.

Trend seems to be autoattack is 2 slashes and a thrust (though warrior was changed), a teleport skill with a thrust at the end, and possibly a series of slashes. So really all they need to alter is the autoattack first 2 slashes (3 for warrior) and the series of slashes animation (pistol whip, flurry, zealot’s defense, they share the same base animation with added effects (well each race/gender has a different one but male charr warrior doing flurry looks exactly like male charr thief doing pistol whip)

Odd ball out is ranger, since their sword chain is distinct. They only have 1 thrust, all their other sword attacks are slashes.

blakkrskyrr.7413:

Devildoc.6721:

blakkrskyrr.7413:

Devildoc.6721:

blakkrskyrr.7413:

honestly I would like a much fancier blade for a rapier than the one linked as [&AgGzqQAA].

sure, but I don’t want a blade that’s wider than my body like this one and 90% of sword skins.

dude, copy the brackets and the text between them and paste them into chat on GW2. any chat works. and it will link a weapon called the Atherblade Sword. it’s a rapier. it is thin. it is long, but by no means wider than your body, unless you are literally a toothpick. But it isn’t flashy enough, not a sword for a “decorated swordsman.”

Yeah, the rapier is thin, I’m talking about every other sword in game. Most have extremely exaggerated wide blades. I don’t like that. A mesmer shouldn’t be wielding Cloud’s buster sword one handed.

You should look into the Mithril Sword then. It is just like the normal uncommon lower level swords but has a nicer metal sheen to it. I use it on my warrior. Also, look into the fractal sword. it looks nice and thin as well, and has a neat white trailing when you swing it or run with it drawn.

The common crafted swords look really crude and not elegant.

Fractal sword would be nice but that’s a random chance on top of a random chance. Random chance of dropping any skin (and a rare chance at that) and then random chance of dropping the skin you want. It’s the worst of both worlds.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Nick, that picture was a screenshot taken prior to the release of the game.

Well, maybe the retconned Lore doesn’t mention anything about a Canthan quarter, but before the release of the game it was intended to be a Canthan quarter as the picture showed.

As we might infer from the fact that there’s an ascalonian quarter (Rurikton) and an elonian quarter (Ossan Quarter), I anticipate that the area would have been named after Master Togo, or some reference to the Dragon Empire.. but for whatever reason, it was collapsed and retconned instead.

blakkrskyrr.7413:

Devildoc.6721:

blakkrskyrr.7413:

honestly I would like a much fancier blade for a rapier than the one linked as [&AgGzqQAA].

sure, but I don’t want a blade that’s wider than my body like this one and 90% of sword skins.

dude, copy the brackets and the text between them and paste them into chat on GW2. any chat works. and it will link a weapon called the Atherblade Sword. it’s a rapier. it is thin. it is long, but by no means wider than your body, unless you are literally a toothpick. But it isn’t flashy enough, not a sword for a “decorated swordsman.”

Yeah, the rapier is thin, I’m talking about every other sword in game. Most have extremely exaggerated wide blades. I don’t like that. A mesmer shouldn’t be wielding Cloud’s buster sword one handed.

Thalador.4218:

Bread.7516:

anet went from classy design to pop garbage. also still waiting on that classy concept mesmer dress that’s ALREADY in game but not for players.

You mean the one with the long-cut skirt, stockings, thigh-high-boots, and opera gloves?

YES! Gracious Lyssa, please make that attire wearable for players, too!

On-topic: If ANet’s smart, they’ll include the rapier as a new weapon. In which case I’ll be really glad, since rapier is all about stabby-stabbing and actual fencing, and not cutting and slashing.

You’re describing heritage, which is in the game.

blakkrskyrr.7413:

honestly I would like a much fancier blade for a rapier than the one linked as [&AgGzqQAA].

sure, but I don’t want a blade that’s wider than my body like this one and 90% of sword skins.

kiba.2768:

Devildoc.6721:

Uhaen.9876:

Devildoc.6721:

Uhaen.9876:

I’m telling you, the Rapier’s gonna make a premier as the new weapon type. Hold on tight, it’s coming.

~Terraa

But I like the current Mesmer sword skills, I just don’t like any of the sword skins for a mesmer.

So do I, but I’ll equip a rapier the moment I get new skills for it.

~Terraa

Current sword skins all look awful on mesmer. Rapier actually looks good.

whisperblade looks decent. but then you’ll be joining the HORDES of mesmers with whisperblade + anomaly combo

Whisperblade is a generic crafted sword skin with pink smoke on it. That’s garbage.

Uhaen.9876:

Devildoc.6721:

Uhaen.9876:

I’m telling you, the Rapier’s gonna make a premier as the new weapon type. Hold on tight, it’s coming.

~Terraa

But I like the current Mesmer sword skills, I just don’t like any of the sword skins for a mesmer.

So do I, but I’ll equip a rapier the moment I get new skills for it.

~Terraa

Current sword skins all look awful on mesmer. Rapier actually looks good.

zargnath.9524:

could someone upload a pic or link? I’m unable to get ingame atm

It would be better to not know, trust me, I know what it looks like and I wish I didn’t.

Uhaen.9876:

I’m telling you, the Rapier’s gonna make a premier as the new weapon type. Hold on tight, it’s coming.

~Terraa

But I like the current Mesmer sword skills, I just don’t like any of the sword skins for a mesmer.

Seriously. The sword skin is awful. Why would you not add the rapier, when a lot of people have expressed a desire to have it? Do you not have an ear to the ground? Do you not pay attention, what’s the deal here?

Zelyhn.8069:

Also arcane grants boon duration, which helps with the perma stacking of vigor (the boon last for more than the ICD), as opposed to the relevant mesmer tree that grants cirt and crit damage.

You’re doing something wrong if you can’t get 1 crit every 5s on a mesmer.

covenn.7165:

Red Jay.2516:

Air 5: Great if you have aim of a god or the enemy is stupid enough to walk into it. Otherwise it’s only good for comboing with Earth 2.

No.

This is perhaps the single best ability in the entire game.

Only thing I wish for static field is for if you’re traited blasting staff, the target circle reflected the increase in radius, would make it easier to aim the edges.

Durzlla.6295:

Devildoc.6721:

Durzlla.6295:

mjharrison.3209:

Durzlla.6295:

mjharrison.3209:

i think it’s silly that 19/20 staff skill are aoe. air #1, #2, water #2 should all be looked at. also sceptre fire #2 (DT), IMO the worst-designed skill in the game.

Staff has a skill that’s not an AoE? The whole point of that weapon is to be a mobile Artillery unit…

Pidgeonholing a weapon into AOE on a class with no weapon swap is a really dumb idea. It virtually guarantees a weapon will be hard to balance – OP in its niche and UP everywhere else.

At the very least there should be traits that increase single target dmg on staff at the cost of less AOE.

You mean like pigeonholing a total Melee oriented build on the same prof or having a purely defensive off hand? I see no problem with it being AoE only, it really shines at area Denial and nuking down groups of mobs.

The problem is we have no weapon swap. So when we get told no aoe because we don’t want to kill the marked cultist in cliffside fractal, all we have as an option is stoning…. but we want our aoe when the marked cultist is not nearby to burst down the other group.

Try a different strat? Run scepter for that part instead? Learn to get mobs away from each other? Take off blasting staff for one encounter?

Run scepter, and then have next to no aoe. Guess you missed that part about wanting to have lots of aoe for when the marked cultist isn’t in range.

Zelyhn.8069:

That’s precisely my point. Your gear does not define your aggro (only to some extent).

What I’m trying to say was your theory thakittens targeting the lowest health/lowest armor was not it, as with a gear swap I had more health and more armor than a mesmer in the group.

The aggro should not be focused on one person, you simply run out of ways to avoid damage if every single attack is aimed at you.

Stealth.9324:

Devildoc.6721:

Renewing stamina is the Arcana VI major trait, it grants 5s of vigor on critical hits, with an internal cooldown of 5s. Mesmers get the exact same trait as the Duelist 5 point MINOR trait. We have to choose a sacrifice to our utility and playstyle in order to get what virtually every mesmer I’ve ever seen gets for free.

Meanwhile our arcana minor traits are ho hum at best. 2s of fury is okay but not all that useful when it basically just gives an autoattack an extra 20% chance to crit.

I’d trade Renewing Stamina to be the minor trait slot and have fury on attunement swap as a major trait, provided it was a longer duration.

Tbh, Our Renewing Stamina is WAY better than Vigor Trait on Mesmer. Our trait procs without any Setup at all, all we need to do is keep attacking and it procs,no worry. Mesmer Traits requires some conditions to fullfill to proc:

1/Clones has to be Shattered to get the effect
2/You have to be close enough where Clone shatter to get effect

So I think Renewing Stamina is justified to be a Major trait.

No. That’s a different vigor trait.

on my mesmer I lay down a chaos storm, or use blurred frenzy, or use izerker or warden, and I get vigor pretty much without fail. It’s on crits.

Zelyhn.8069:

Don’t expect that the mobs will decide not to hit you just because you have low hp or defence …

I said, I’ve tried swapping gear, I always have 30 points in water, I had 20 points in earth, with full soldier gear, that’s about as much defense as elementalist can get. I had more hp than the full zerker mesmer. Ele still took aggro.

Besides, one of the major points in the manifesto of this game was because there was no holy trinity, aggro was going to be shared by group members, rather than having one person who has all the aggro.

Zelyhn.8069:

My friend you need to learn how to use that 2s of fury
Even if it was a grandmaster trait I would strive to get it!

It’s enough for maybe 1 skill, but as staff, a lot of your skills take longer than 2s to have any effect for damage. Eruption, Ice Spike, and Meteor Shower won’t do damage in 2s, Lightning surge barely will. Lava font and autoattacks are basically the only skilsl staff has that can make use of 2s of fury on attunement swap.

By the way, your liking of the trait and statement that you’d trait for it even further down the line makes my point that renewing stamina and arcane fury should trade places, with arcane fury getting longer duration as a major trait.

darkace.8925:

Arcane Precision, particularly the fire attunement effect (7.5% chance for a 1 second Burn on critical hit) seems fairly underwhelming for a grandmaster trait (especially one competing with Evasive Arcana). This trait badly needs an overhaul, in my humble opinion.

It’s a minor trait. The trait that is competing with Evasive Aracana is Elemental Surge, which gives your arcane skills the guaranteed ability to cause conditions. Using arcane wave in water attunement always causes chill, or always immobilize in earth attunement. It’s a potentially powerful trait if used with arcane power as your arcane skill, as your next 5 spells will cause those conditions. Imagine using arcane power in earth attunement, and then using lava font, the pulses will be guaranteed to crit, and also immobilize the target in the aoe, this synergizes with the Arcane 25 point minor trait you’re talking about.

Renewing stamina is the Arcana VI major trait, it grants 5s of vigor on critical hits, with an internal cooldown of 5s. Mesmers get the exact same trait as the Duelist 5 point MINOR trait. We have to choose a sacrifice to our utility and playstyle in order to get what virtually every mesmer I’ve ever seen gets for free.

Meanwhile our arcana minor traits are ho hum at best. 2s of fury is okay but not all that useful when it basically just gives an autoattack an extra 20% chance to crit.

I’d trade Renewing Stamina to be the minor trait slot and have fury on attunement swap as a major trait, provided it was a longer duration.

Am I absolutely crazy, or has there been some changes to threat mechanics since June 26th?

Before June 26th, I’d be in a group for Arah with 1 mesmer, a guardian, and 2 warriors, and Lupi would hardly ever target me, in fact I didn’t even know about his single target life drain, because I’d never been hit by it. Nowadays, he focus fires me, every single single target life drain, every single shadow walk, every single single target protectile is aimed at me. I get completely exhausted of all options to avoid. mist form, arcane shield, dodges, sigil of energy, burning retreat, magnetic aura (when target is a projectile), and then I’m getting hit when I have no evasive options left, and he’s STILL targetting me.

The only time he was NOT targetting me, is when there’s a second elementalist.

This same thing seems to happen in the volcano fractal final boss, with the flame arrows. 100% of them are shot at me unless there’s a second elementalist.

These aggro mechanics seem to be flat out broken. I’m not using a shield, I don’t have highest toughness, I guarantee I’m not doing highest damage when I’m having to focus so much of my attention on avoiding every attack, and I’m not the closest in proximity, nor the furthest away. I’ve tried full soldier’s gear, I’ve tried full dps gear.

as far as I know, Eles aren’t intended to tank, they don’t have heavy armor, have the worst base health in the game, and don’t have as many blocks as a guardian, nor as many evades as a ranger or thief or mesmer.

It actually kind of makes me miss holy trinity, where at least the person who consistently got aggro was built for it.

the crafting dev. she used to post here all the time.

Guess Arenanet didn’t want me asking by name, even though I tried to PM first.