Guild Wars 2

Power Block: 5 Seconds of Slow on Interrupt

I can hope

Reverting the change will mean just throwing things back to their previous level of bad. Number tweaking may be in order, since but they need to let the change settle down a bit before they can really see how it’ll turn out and what the best fix is. Panic fixes rarely turn out well, as most of us know.

Embolism.8106:

Signet’s effect does not kick in until about 5 seconds after the Illusion is conjured, which makes it rather pointless as that’s when you need the extra health to keep them alive.

Also, Phantasms are more fragile than Clones, despite what the main site says. Clones used to be more fragile in Beta but then they greatly increased Clone health, without touching Phantasm health.

So buffing phantasm health might make them viable?

scerevisiae.1972:

coglin.1867:

I am a little confused here. When did they state we were “forced” to do it?

It’s “forced” because the super weapon is gamebreakingly strong. Nothing should be that strong for starters, and rather lame PVE quests (killing mobs and fedexing items) is the kind of thing that belongs in <level 10 PVE zones, it should definitely not be the “IWIN” mechanic of a WVW borderlands map.

It’s not that strong. Upgraded gates will survive, and there’s always the chance of repairing the gate before the zerg arrives unless the enemy is just that organized[at which point, kudos]. If towers are in the way, the zerg will be delayed. If shrines are active, it could be delayed. If the other team was prepared to repair it immediately as the weapon fired, it could be mitigated[remember, it hits the gates in pulses.].

From how I see it, the Oasis Event isn’t an “I-Win” mechanic, but something that’ll require some thought of how to use or deal with on both sides.

Drakortha.6974:

The amount of times I see “L2P” and “Scrub” in your responses leads me to believe we have some real PVP pro’s in here..

Seriously though.. good job completely missing the point of the thread..

Not a L2P issue.. or an OP issue. I know how to fight and beat a mesmer.. my complaint is they are a pain in the bum to fight.. especially in group fights.. you can’t argue with that

And…?

As I’m a mesmer main, I’ve learned to be able to distinguish quickly and without much effort the real mesmer from clones. If you PvP enough and understand mesmers a good amount, this is possible for anyone. I also find rangers to be a pain at times when they’re at an elevated position, and thieves when they’re smart and don’t run into my baits, and so on. If you’re not saying they’re OP or broken, then what are you saying?

Ithilwen.1529:

As I said, I play both Mesmer and Thief often. I win the majority of the time against a a d/p or s/d thief.

Power Block doesn’t need a crutch aimed specifically at thieves. It’s not worthy of a GM skill anyway imo. ( though I love that it is similar to some gw1 Mesmer abilities).

My points are two fold: Thieves are underpowered already and don’t need another nerf and building around power block is, shall we say? Less than optimal for any sort of PvP anyway.

I’d recommend that the OP change to a better build.

Um… I play MtD Shatter. Doesn’t affect me, don’t know why you would assume from anything I said that I’d be using Power Block. Said time and time again: This is not about thieves. This is about Power Block.

And this isn’t really a crutch aimed at thieves. It’s just that it was aimed at everything but thieves before, now I just want it all to be clean and even. Plus, thieves aren’t going to be completely locked down. 1 skill will have a 5 second cool down. 5 seconds. 1 skill. out of 9 other skills the thief has to use, I don’t think it’ll be that big of a deal, it’s not like we’re asking thieves to have CD’s on all their weapon skills, or that thief skills have a 5 second CD on normal interrupts, or that thieves actually lose the initiative on interrupted skills, or that more thief skills become interruptible.

This change asks nothing, I believe, unreasonable or substantially OP. Your argument that “it’ll still be UP” doesn’t really give reason not to change it, correct me if I’m wrong. Also, the fact that thieves have been nerfed a lot doesn’t change a thing. If thieves are underpowered, ask for buffs or changes, don’t drag other changes down.

Thus, there is no reason to not implement this change to Power Block. Correct me if I’m wrong, of course.

Sagat.3285:

echo.2053:

Im pretty sure im missing something, whats this whole whine and moan about the DE trait?

It hinders mesmer diversity, you can’t reliable play without it ,mesmer is balanced around it thus impairing many combinations some traits never got any use because we ran out of points 4/20 being taken by DE. I see it as bigger controversy than PB because other builds than shatter for 3 years and emerging MtD could have been created, I don’t consider lockdown completely real but it’s still there.

Something needs to be done about that, as for PB some are trying to make it a thief bane which won’t happen anyway.

Exactly. I’m just unsatisfied with how ANet designed this trait, if I wanted to make a bane of thieves I’d have asked for more reveal or anti-blind thingies. I even stated at the beginning and numerous times this has nothing to do with the mesmer-thief relationship. This change’ll probably be about as significant as the .25 second condition damage that now procs. In fact, that’s a great metaphor[right word or no?]. The buff to condi damage to have percentage of seconds proc damage is very insignificant, but it’s at least something compared to when that half a second just did nothing, right?

Also, we’d love either DE to be a mechanic[maybe with an ICD, there’re many opinions] or some other way to make clones, ‘cause we’re pretty bottlenecked right now, but that’s for another thread. Try to keep on topic, please~

Puck.9612:

Wait…. they are removing the alpine map completely? I thought this PvE nightmare was going to be added in a rotation with the current map.

How about you replace EBG with this map instead? Leave the Alpine map for the BL’s so roamers don’t have to spend their time playing Running Wars 2

They said they’re going to replace it initially[since everyone’ll want to try out the new map, even the skeptics if only to confirm their skepticism], then depending on circumstance may begin a rotation between Desert and Alpine.

This won’t be so bad, I thinks. Wooden gates will be destroyed? Upgrade gates or just repair them. Zergs go into Oasis for event? Maybe it’ll be like going Lord rush or stacking on Tranq in that you may be abandoning many objectives for it. Maybe with the dinosaurs and the unique terrain of the Oasis, it’ll be better to increase coverage thus a single zerg won’t be getting as many cores as a number of spread-out roamers might.

Plus, it might not be… optimal for zergs to commit to the event. If the zerg commits itself there, it’ll take some time to reach the gates it just blew up, thus plenty of time for the defenders to repair. Perhaps there’ll be a third dog waiting to take advantage of the losing server’s momentary opening after they lose the Oasis event, giving a smaller server a chance to swoop in and reap the winner’s reward.

It’s my thought, at least, it won’t be as simple as just winning the event, but also being able to take advantage of it.

BlackDevil.9268:

Please explain how you came to the conclusion that inflicting confusion on shatter is equal to an ethereal field and how every projectile has a projectile finisher.

No, just some strained logic.
All Shatter Skills inflict Confusion
Distortion is a Reflect
Distortion inflicts confusion
The reflected projectiles are reflected through a shatter effect, therefore they should inflict confusion.
Projectiles that inflict confusion are the same as the confusing bolts from projectile finishers through Ethereal fields, thus the connection I drew. [So, while there’s no field, it’s essentially the same effect]

Not saying this is how it should work, I was just thinking this could be a cool way that the traits could synergize.

Gabriell.4856:

Azure The Heartless.3261:

Gabriell.4856:

Gosh. This is such a simple fix. I don’t know why everyone is even discussing this. Just add 5-10 secs CD to any CD ability that is interrupted. /thread

The mesmers are not satisfied with this because the one class that happens to be in many aspects their hard counter is unaffected by that.

That’s why the thread is so long.

Oh so Mesmers want a buff to a skill that is, by the Devs, working as intended.

If they want a skill to go above and beyond the original intent, what are they willing to give up in exchange for the buff? All I hear is I want this and I want that.

Lets start off with 10 sec CD on DE shall we?

Is it so much to ask for an underpowered trait to be less underpowered? It’ll still be underpowered, undoubtedly. It’d be a whole other issue if we were asking for a buff of an already good viable trait.

And isn’kitten fact that the Dev’s aren’t perfect? They’ve over nerfed things, created plain out bad traits/skills[Looking at you, Disrupter’s Sustainment and Mimic], and so on. So asking for a buff to a bad trait/skill shouldn’t require us to nerf something good/viable. That’s like admitting all the traits weren’t meant to be viable or good, and that many traits were designed to be useless.

Plus, even with this buff, thieves will be mostly immune to interrupts on their weapon skills in the first place because of instant-casts, short casts, and evasion/stealth. They’ll still be in a very advantageous position against the trait.

Given this, I don’t understand why people assume this will break thieves or think this will over buff mesmers. It isn’t like we’re asking for how it was originally released.

Gabriell.4856:

Gosh. This is such a simple fix. I don’t know why everyone is even discussing this. Just add 5-10 secs CD to any CD ability that is interrupted. /thread

We’d be fine with this. Give us this. It is all we wanted, for this trait to proc its effect on any skill that’s interrupted, not excluding thieves[but, of course, excluding AA’s].

Orochimaru.4730:

OMG when they went to map view and zoomed out, I almost vomited!

At least try to do a better job of blending it in! You literally just copy pasted over the old borders!

Yes, hopefully that was just a make-shift layer-on just so they can do some tests. It would get annoying seeing just copy-pasted squares whenever you’re looking at the map.

Here’s an idea that could become a cool synergy between traits: Illusionary Retribution makes all shatters inflict confusion while Masterful Reflection makes Distortion a reflect skill. If these traits worked together, it would turn every projectile bounced back into an ethereal projectile finisher[confusion-inflicting projectile]. It would make sense in that Distortion’s effect would now be inflicting confusion, as is the wording of IR.

Thoughts?

Maybe you should point less fingers and start asking for help. Aw yeah~

TheFool.4589:

Rin.1046:

TheFool.4589:

The problem I have with the rifle idea is zerker theifs like me are gonna get the “ranger LB mash2 to win” treatment. Nobody really complains about theifs any more and if we get a rifle, you know will figure out a way to crit at long range, then people will get mad, theif will get a nerf and so forth…I’d rather take a great sword and avoid this now…

How is a zerker greatsword any less rage inducing than a zerker rifle? People complain about thief all the time, and the anti zerker brigade will complain about any zerker weapon. It won’t matter one bit what weapon we get, someone will find something to complain about.

I’m not saying I don’t want a greatsword, I would actually prefer it over rifle, I just don’t think people’s complaints about zerker gear is reason enough to not have rifle.

Think about it….ones Melee and up close, the other is range. If the theif is given the ability to crit the same way their backstab does in stealth for example, you just gave a highly maneuverable class the opportunity to down another class at a long range without ever being touched.
If you were walking around in WvW and saw a theif in the distance go stealth and suddenly you’re downed, would you get mad? You had no chance to defend yourself like you could if they were going for a backstab.

Well, who knows what you might lose in specializing as well? After all, it won’t be a “Thief” with the rifle.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Andred.1087:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

The best part is, even though legendary weapons are 3 YEARS past their expected release… they STILL aren’t coming, only a “handful” will be in the expansion… which probably means we will see 1 new GS and that’s it.

I suspect it will be at LEAST another year before we see the rest of them, if we see them at all…

Interpreting “handful” to mean fewer than a full set, despite no evidence to suggest this is what was meant. Good to see you’re as optimistic as ever.

Realistic more like it… in the past 3 years there is nothing to suggest that we will get MORE than our lowest expectations. They are very deliberate about their wording in order to cover their bases. A full set would be 15 different legendary weapons. In no universe ever has a handful been interpreted as 15 oversized weapons.

I could see as high as 3, if we are really lucky. But given their particular track record with legendary weapons, and the fact that we haven’t even seen 1, I’ll maintain my stance until proven otherwise, thus far taking the lowest possible expectation route has left me with my expectations mostly met over the last 3 years.

Not realistic, pessimistic. Realism would see that it wouldn’t make any sense for the Devs to release less[or more] than a full set of legendaries. They aren’t that hard to design, and releasing any less will simply create antagonism and distress, such a move literally has no benefits for them. As for why they haven’t added more until now, it could be they wanted to wait until the best moment[Expansion is a pretty good moment to expand on things] and also until their precursor crafting system was ready. In this way, they’re adding more content to the package. This is all reasonable. What wouldn’t be reasonable is ANet doing half a job on this, which would only cripple their expansion. They don’t want this, and neither do we, so I feel a realistic view would be that ANet will give us a full set of Legendary weapons.

T’was a stress test. Just checking how things would work out if they shoved a bunch of PC’s into an area. Simply put, it wasn’t the full beta.

Donari.5237:

I read this paragraph in the blog,

“This crafting system is an account-based activity, which means you’ll only be able to craft each precursor this way once. However, all of the currently existing precursor acquisition methods will remain intact in addition to this new acquisition method. That means that if you want a particular precursor more than once, you’ll have to fall back to the original methods of acquisition.”

as saying the new ones can be gotten the old ways. Or else they are saying you can’t make double Legendaries if the mood so moves you.

I can see that it could be read as the old ways will work only for the old precursors, which will also have the new ways, and the new ones will only get the new ways, but I’m going to keep seeing it as every pre has the same two ways of getting it.

Well, now there’s a double-deal for double legends. You craft one old and one new, you have two Legendary, let’s say, swords to dual wield. They can have any stats. Advantage: you can change their skins to either one, and you get both skins. It’s making double-legends less redundant, in this way.

StickerHappy.8052:

Ithilwen.1529:

I meant that I consider Power Block an unreasonably weak skill for having to go 6 into a trait line to get it.

In addition, I think thieves are already underpowered, and for that reason I don’t agree that a change that specifically targets thieves should be made.

Thieves underpowered? Maybe thats the reason why almost every team has one?
/smh.
Anyway back to topic

Specifically targeting thieves, it currently ONLY does not affect thieves (weaponset wise).

Hello? /wat /facepalm

Sticker, take a breath please. Talking smack doesn’t get anywhere and even discourages people from considering your points after they’ve received smack.

Ithilwen.1529:

I meant that I consider Power Block an unreasonably weak skill for having to go 6 into a trait line to get it.

In addition, I think thieves are already underpowered, and for that reason I don’t agree that a change that specifically targets thieves should be made.

I see your points, and will state some counter points:
1. It is weak, and may still be so if changed. At which point, is there a reason to not change it given that it will still be weak?

2. This is not a change that specifically targets thieves. PB as it is currently specifically exempts thieves from its affects[almost completely]. Therefore, this will simply make PB all-inclusive.

morbidillusion.2759:

But no class’s AA is affected by PB.

I think I addressed this: AA’s are a special kind of skill, they’re AA’s. They have their own name to describe them, so they can be differentiated from the rest of a weapon skill bar. Also, every class’s AA’s act the same when interrupted[no extra CD]. The argument here is that thief Initiative skills[which does not include AA’s, as AA’s don’t consume Init], or their generalized “weapon skills”, should not be excepted from PB’s effects. The AA argument is thus not valid as it is a different beast altogether from the 2-5 skills. Also, PB would not be making profession-based exceptions in excluding AA’s as every profession would have equal access to this “exception”.

I know I just took a single bit of your post[and it seems you may have actually been informing Stickers that the AA of thieves really can’t count towards PB’s rupt sources], but wanted to restate this point.

Ah, Sticker brings up a good point: Many of the thief’s skills are uninterruptible, meaning instant or near so. Thus, even if Power Block affected thieves it would still affect thieves with greater rarity than any other class. Even so, would this change break the profession? I think not, as thieves would still be balanced to counter against this kind of trait. This change will become no thief-killer.

It was mentioned that guilds would have new ways to interact/associate with other guilds, I believe. I’m wondering if this meant that there would alliances or relationship mechanics to create a relationship between two guilds or have a main guild create sub-guilds.

This was mentioned in Angry Joe’s interview in regards to his Angry Army being unable to fit into a single guild, but has not expanded on.

I’m thinking, given the theme of the expansion, it’ll be a Reaver, based on the Pale Reavers. They’re a group of rogue-like sylvari in the Pact and starting area who are apparently excellent snipers, fitting with the rifle idea.

Wouldn’t it make sense to assume this cap only applies to where Conditions are the weakest, and that is against NPC’s?

I like to think that I’m actually teleporting my clones from an alternate dimension where they have family and loved ones, and the clones aren’t actually running towards the target but away from me. At this point, I explode their life force into a thousand itsy bitsy pieces, at which point they’re reincarnated into purple and pink butterflies cursed to never be able to return to their homes again.

And when iPersona is used, that’s just a me from another dimension shattering the me in the present dimension which then teleports himself in to take my place.

Saturn.6591:

Sometimes it’s really nice to see the reactions some people show. I’ve once had a turret engi flaming me for playing a noob-PU build and that I’m too noob to play anything else than meta and I’m stupid and an idiot and whatnot… that after I killed him. A turret engi. With a condi mesmer. XD

Or yesterday I’ve killed that pewpew ranger, and the conversation was like

-“pu?”
-“no”
-“what then?”
-“MtD-shatter”
-“sick”
-“=)”

I love playing this build. I’ve played double ranged shatter too for a bit, but I find that I can do so much more with MtD and I also contribute much more to the team.

This is my favorite conversation to have.

The only one I’m ok with is #1. The rest are a no-go.

Hopefully PvE. Against bosses it could mean condi is getting better. Against non-bosses… around the same, yeah.

Hopefully this is to improve conditions in PvE, removing the cap an all.

This was apparently just a stress test in a very limited area of the expansion. No new news.

DarkSyze.8627:

I think Arena net believe that to add Pve content in wvw will make it challenge and fun: No! Pve is Pve, Not Wvw or PVp. I spend more time in Pve because it is challenge and Fun. I spend less time with Pvp and Wvw because it is not challenge and fun: so why would i play Wvw for pve content? do not make sense at all.

Again and again: the reason why wvw is not challenge and not fun is because there is 4 class that require less-no skill to do very high damage with almost no risk + low-zero cooldown.

There is more reason why wvw is not fun but with my experience: that is why i am spend less of my time there. I do not want to waste a lot of my time in a game mode to die every second and to not have fun.

In Pve: it is not even like that at all: except for some very high mobs+boss compare to wvw where these 4 class are there all the time.

Last and again: the reason why there is different game is for more challenge and for more fun. And more Important: to have diferent experience. Again, to have diferent experience, Not same experience.

Style: your research, investigation and evidence is very sad to know, Arena net is against work with us player to make the game challenge and fun. I will now not waste my time anymore to ask for challenge and fun.

Example:Relationship- it is like finding evidence that the person you are in relationship with: is using you for their own benefit.

PvE. That’s what I’m wondering. Why this red-hot hatred towards “PvE”? You say you want things to be more fun and challenging? How? By removing “PvE” from the map completely, meaning no keeps and no towers and no lords? No verticality? Personally, I find that boring and uninteresting.

People have to stop shunning PvE as if it is the bane of all things good. PvE are mechanics to add additional strategy, PvE is the very basic foundation and base which all other game modes are built from. Even sPvP, the game mode furthest away from PvE in GW2, has PvE elements in it, and we don’t complain about it[Except Skyhammer, but only for the same reasons people dislike EotM. Auto-kill CC without the chance to Rally]. It’s only when these elements intrude on our game instead of complimenting it that we should be angry. Only when the environment is “OP” in terms that it overshadows player efforts that we can say “this is too much”.

The Oasis event won’t be killing players, nor will the upgraded Lords be able to single-handedly take out a zerg. From how I perceived it, dinosaurs are fodder, the Lords are simply meant to be more useful and less helpless when the defenders try defending, and the Shrine mechanics will simply compliment the WvW experience.

This is just my opinion, of course, but I feel like everyone’s acting like “PvE” is some kind of dirty cuss.

Kasteros.9847:

RKyrk.4761:

Will there finally be less siege in WVW so we can enjoy the fights?
Will there finally be less PVE in WVW so we can enjoy the fights?

/All GvG/Scrim/Fight-guilds

shhhh delete point about gvg and guilds Cos anet won’t even read it, since they don’t care about gvg etc. and support blobs and ppt as much as possible

They just don’t care about WvWers’ version of GvG, ‘cause it’s something the WvW community made up, kinda like how people can have races in custom PvP arenas to see how fast each team can kill the Lord in Foefire and ANet wouldn’t care because it’s a made-up game-mode.

PPK will just have people ignoring the objectives and allow some people to believe WvW was meant to just be open-field zergfests. I politely disagree with this point.

You’re #1 Engi? Can we be frands? [See what I did?]

Nah, I’m fine with confusion. MtD builds’ confusion is no joke, and while it doesn’t outshine Torment individually, it compliments it extremely well and can become a great source of damage and control if stacked well.

I love that 8:30 or so ranger kill. You put confusion on him, and he literally killed himself, which is what you like to see when running MtD builds.

As for thieves, they’re easy enough to predict. They stealth, they wait a moment or two or three, then they strike. Sit in your chaos storm in these moments or use scepter block to avoid it and just shatter and Confusing Images them when they’re revealed. Condi pressure will usually kill them quickly if they try to fight back or run away once you get them good once or twice. It’s the smart ones that sometimes stay in stealth for long periods of times and just wait you out that can be the problem. I usually keep my stealths[Torch and Decoy] on hand once my defenses run out to quickly counter-burst them when they do finally surface.

Siege Question: How many stacks of Stability will the Shield Generator be able to pulse out with its Force Dome skill?

Fire Keep Questions: Will the Fire Keep’s Inferno Egg have a limited number of uses? Also, will the Inferno Hounds have a pulsing Stability to compensate their lack of stun-breaks/Stability and to prevent them from becoming CC-Locked by opposing zergs with ease?

Air Keep Questions: Are the areas that the Jump Pads can reach exclusive to the defenders, or will the invaders be able to take more roundabout ways of reaching those heights? Also, will the Air Turrets be sparser as the altitude increases[meaning they’re less present as the danger they individually pose increases]?

Sub-Air Keep Question: Will Masteries work in WvW, meaning that heights can be covered via gliding, making falls less punishing?

Earth Keep Questions: The earth walls are said to pop up as players approach. Is it possible to use teleportation skills[Blink, Shadowstep] to bypass walls by teleporting from a distance that the wall isn’t triggered at? Also, will the defenders be unable to move through walls triggered by attackers?

I felt there were times you could have gotten in a decisive burst shatter with a dodge clone instead of waiting for the certainty of the iLeap clone’s immobilization. However I do rarely play power shatter[Don’t think I have, actually] so there may be something I’m not seeing, such as the opponent’s ability to predict dodge-into-shatter plays.

Ah~ I’m so salty right now. I could say why I deserved it, but I’m sure there are many people with just the same reasons. Well, whatever, I’ll get over it. I’m just hoping there’ll be a mesmer operative in there who’ll be throwing us all biscuits of info.

I find most rangers to be easy food once I close the gap. No point nerfing them, really. That’d just reduce one of the only challenging things I face when dealing with any decent ranger.

Thus, I don’t find them needing of nerfs at this moment. They’re somewhat like mesmers at the moment: Filters that sort out the bad from good, those who adapt and learn from those who don’t.

I’m fine with it. I’m a mesmer and I find I can kill most rangers that rely on their ranged burst to do all their work. All a matter of closing the distance and avoiding damage as you do. If you can’t, that’s your own fault since all classes have their own way to do this in one form or another.

The trait “+1 clone whenever you produce a clone” seems popular and I’d be in favor of it. This seems either Chaos or Illusions.

Another might be a “20% CD reduction to illusion skills” which could be in Inspiration, letting it stack with Illusions to give phantasms and clone skills a whopping 40% reduction to CD.

“Clone-on-Interrupt” seems a bit gimmicky, but if this stacks on the “+1 Clone” trait it’d be 2 clones every interrupt.

“Clone on shatter” would definitely be cool and fit into Illusions line.

One thing I’d like to recommend is “Phantasms don’t disappear on shatter,” which could create some strange build built around using phantasms as reusable shatter-fodder.

As to the problem of the turrets, I see the potential problem and am hoping that these two things are done with at least the Earth and Fire Turrets[I see little problem with the wind turrets since they don’t seem devastating to anyone paying attention to your positioning]:
-The Earth Turrets, while they may have a large AoE, should at least have a large and bright AoE circle to give a tell/warning to those approaching or standing under it, meaning it’s mainly an issue if a zerg isn’t paying attention and can be avoided with ease.
-The Fire Turrets I can see ruining smaller groups. So long as they’re mainly located close to the keep and their projectiles are slow, I can see this mainly act as anti-zerg defense, as it should. It doesn’t seem like these will be gatling firing fire bolts, and maybe it’ll give an AoE tell so, again, it acts as an anti-zerg suppressant[with AoE] and not acting as a “Skyhammer” in small encounters.

That’s all, really. If a defender, however, takes advantage of a friendly turret nearby and uses a well-timed immobilization/stun or chill/cripple, I feel that’s fair game for using the environment.

As for the Wind Turrets, we’ve seen 5 of them, I believe, outside the Wind Keep. 3 of them were on a bridge, pushing victims into a shallow river from which it seems the fallen can just go around again and be more careful. Not too punishing, and not too in the way of fights given their position on a bridge. The other two were on more… high-risk spots. However, they weren’t hidden and one of the spots didn’t seem very ideal for a chance encounter to fight in[on stairs]. The other spot, on a somewhat wide ledge, might be more likely two groups or people will meet to fight on, however the turret is near one end of the path and thus isn’t incredibly hard to avoid in an encounter.

Other than what I’ve stated, it’ll just be another thought commanders will have to have: “How many shrines are on?” “Should we take out the shrines on the way, or go for the keep and have roamers take the shrines?” It won’t end zerging, of course, but it’ll increase the strategy necessary for each push, involving disabling enemy defenses to clear the path for your army.

Remember to put points above all else in PvP. Don’t feel obligated to help your teammate who’s outnumbered if you think they’re acting a good distraction. Also don’t try to play to survive if surviving means giving up points. If you’re attracting attention, use yourself as a distraction.

Well, this is just general advice.

Two, mainly. There’s Condition PU and Condition Shatter.

Condi PU tends to use on-clone-death traits, thus Debilitating Dissipation and Deceptive Evasion are usually a must-have, thus x/4/6, to give you the clone generation and the damage. I’m not very knowledgeable about this beyond that point. This is a passive style. This tends to have more survivability than other mesmer builds due to the constant stealth plus the boons it gives, along with the lack of multiple stats being used to max damage.

Condi Shatter is more active, usually revolving around Maim the Disillusioned trait to make each shatter a condition-bomb of Torment and Confusion, both of which can turn into high-damaging and bursty damage sources if the opponent can’t deal with them. This means the set-up is x/4/x/x/6 to get both DE and MtD. This build tends to be more tanky than Power Shatter given it doesn’t need numerous stats to maximize the damage. I find this extremely pleasant, as I can usually get 10-11 stacks of confusion and/or 6-12 stacks of Torment up consistently and constantly for lots of punishment.

Ballads.2509:

I notice lots of people against the change but only like 3-4 people who claim it was good. They attack others with L2P insults, telling them not to speak their opinion, and to wait for the meta to adapt. Maybe i am missing some of the other “pro” change posters, but i am sure am getting tired of the same voices championing it while attempting to suppress those who don’t like it.
Many of us don’t like the change, our opinions are just as important as yours.

Aren’t there just a few championing it on each side consistently while a couple come in to voice support for either side once in a while? I haven’t counted, but I feel you’re selectively counting when the numbers are about even in this thread. Or maybe I’m selectively counting, it’d have to be checked.

And yes, your opinions are important, but so is discussion, and those of us “championing” it on either side are discussing things: Why we like it, why we don’t, what we think is wrong, and how to properly fix balance.

And sure, then there are those coming in saying that the zerg is just mad ‘cause they can’t zerg the same way as before. Those are also valid opinions, which say that zerging isn’t a fun meta in the first place and would rather it be discouraged in the way it is now. Then there are those calling the anti-zerg crowd people who don’t understand organized raids and believe that the old Stability was best.

We’re discussing our opinions which contradict each other, spurring thought, pushing for an answer to this question of how stability/CC should be dealt with in this current state of WvW. Different from trying to snuff each other out.

Malediktus.3740:

Not stability is overpowered, but CC is. Nothing is more infuriating than loosing control over your character. I know at least one MMO game which removed CC like fear from the game because its so annoying.

Well, Stability isn’t overpowered anymore, definitely. And CC is supposed to be infuriating and annoying, that’s it’s whole purpose[AKA you should not be having a blast when you get CC’ed], to make sure DPS doesn’t go running amok and unchecked. It’s also one of the core principles ANet promised the game’s balance would revolve around[DPS, CC, and Support]. The fact that CC is now actually controlling crowds means it’s doing its job. Maybe support, however, isn’t doing enough. Number tweaking can be done, but first we need to wait and see whether the meta can figure things out on its own before jumping on this.

Bubi.5237:

Dondagora.9645:

I see your point. What about splitting into two zergs of roughly half the original? Still enough to lessen the focused AoE, and focusing one might give chance to the other to begin focusing. Or would this be the same problem, and to what extent?

As I see the Pirate Meta (couldn’t play enough sadly), you want to down the enemy using ranged dmg, while CCing them so they’ll not run out from your bomb.
With this stabi change, CC will be almost always more than the stabi for you, so..
If you split into 2, maybe one of your half can CC/dps while the other is focused, but I’m not sure if it will change anything for the better, it’s hard enough to kill someone as they can just res them fast even if you focus with your whole blob.

The thing that seems to make this meta strong is the fact that the cap for support skills⁵ means that spreading high stacks Stability throughout a zerg is harder, thus the zerg is full of low stability stacks while running through high stacks of CC. To counter this, I’m proposing a solution that will either have the enemy zerg splitting their CC, making it easier to penetrate with the more concentrated Stability of smaller zergs. The Zergs don’t have to be flanking, but by spreading out the CC, it’s basically weakening what’s preventing the melee train from reaching the pirate ship.

So my thoughts are thus: Either a smaller melee train will reach the enemy pirate ship while the ship concentrates on the other train, or the pirate ship will try to hit both zergs which are a distance away from each other with CC fields which will effectively mean that the CC is spread out and is easier to pass with stability. As for ranged damage, aren’t there defenses against this such as mesmer’s Feedback and traited Focus and Guardian’s bubble-thingy?

Well, this is all theory, but would these counter-strategies work[Splitting into two trains to thin the CC and using various anti-projectile skills] against the Pirate Ship meta?