Guild Wars 2

With a Staff and Pistol you can’t kill people in WvW that run away, though, which is basically everyone.

I like orbs. Anet should:

1. Add orbs back in as-is when they fix the hack-ability of the mechanics.

2. Take a look at other ways to help the losing team make a comeback, probably related to supply, supply decay, and nerfing large supply pools of the winning team. This would have a more direct impact than raw stats of individual players.

Honestly the largest impediment to getting a foothold and making a comeback is the fact that every tower and keep is fully upgraded, the upgrades never decay, and has kittenloads of siege (or tons of supply with which to spam kittenloads of siege).

Fix the pooling and stacking of supply, and the losing team has a much larger window of opportunity.

Like I said in the previous thread about this topic, the things that need to be nerfed are the timing and sequencing of the combo (and a direct nerf to Mug damage seems inevitable).

Backstab itself doesn’t really need to be adjusted. If you combine the following tweaks, the result is pretty much 100x more balanced for the lame 30k combo, and still viable (if not moreso) for normal backstab builds:

1. Change CND to deal damage at the beginning of the animation and stealth at the end of the animation. Extend the animation time by 0.25 seconds to compensate the earlier damage.

2. Nerf the Mug damage directly, possibly splitting part of it off into a 5x stack of Bleed. (e.g., reduce the raw power-based damage by 50-75%, and adding 5 stacks of bleed).

3. Increase the animation of Backstab to 1.0 seconds, but enable the damage bonus from the sides in addition to the rear.

This combination of changes does very little to reduce the power of any single ability — in fact, it makes Backstab itself more viable. It also makes CND more reliable as a stealth mechanism. The critical change though is that it spaces out the damage so that the opponent can use defensive capabilities if they are on their toes. The Thief may even have to hold their Backstab a half second to wait a dodge roll. Zomg, combat awareness mixing from both sides of the fight.

It also strictly disables the masking/abstraction of the CND preload when combo’d with Steal — forcing the Thief to be in melee range for basically the full animation, rather than just the last 0.1 seconds.

That build looks familiar, hee hee.

Of course, that means it’s probably a great build.

Because that’s annoying. And you don’t want to keep exiting combat to pull people.

And Sword is pimp.

Edit:

Also AOE knockdown + pull is something useful all the time in every situation, including dynamic situations, and projectile block = win almost all the time. Focus is So Good You Feel Dumb When It’s Not In Your Hand.

STRanger.5120:

EasymodeX.4062:

The highest I was hit for prior to the Signet change was 18.5k with Backstab.

30k+ damage combo that lands within 0.3 seconds at 900 range.

The important parts: “Prior to signet change” and that 30K+ made-up non-sense number (you cannot meant that seriously, right?).

As Coolmoos indicated, I am not only 100% serious about the 30k damage number, I am being conservative. I used 30k because it’s more believable than the actual ~34k when you add the full combo together and when you really try to stack your damage (Orr truffle steak, popping multiple Signets for Might (I wouldn’t do this on a Thief)).

20k Backstab, 7.5 CND, 6.5k Mug, 2k Air sigil. That’s 36k damage. That overkills me by 21,000 damage.

The kicker is that it’s instant from 900 range. Warriors can hit for 25k+ with Kill Shot. That’s pretty absurd, but that’s ok. They have to have full adrenaline to do it (can’t do it cold), and they have a 2.0 second telegraph (can be enhanced with quickness, but still a 1.0s animation). Thief? 0.25 second dodge or die (and you actually have to realize it’s a Thief unless you really like burning all your endurance on random enemy classes at the start of every fight).

Part of the problem is the stat spread of PvE Berserker gear which is different than the sPvP variety. However, the mechanics of CND-Mug-BS are still broken. Nearly instantaneous burst, with nearly 0 telegraph, and for that much damage? Over 200% of glass HP? Even if you stack Vit and Tough, you will still be downed, or pretty close to it (with exceptions, for example auto-proc Endure Pain or Guardian passive Aegis).

The cumulative damage display for rapid-hit attacks is a caster-side UI effect. If it were a display thing, then the person on the receiving end would NOT be getting hit by huge Bladetrails. However, they are, so it is not a display issue on the caster side (or if it is, the display issue is a separate thing and there is still bugged damage output happening).

Also, the combat log does not accumulate damage. That’s only the popup text on-screen.

WW does more DPS than Hundred Blades. Pew pew, pew pew.

My main is lvl 80 too, don´t have full exotics, and the highest backstab I encountered was for 12K (that was pre-balance/nerf of Assasins signet).

The highest I was hit for prior to the Signet change was 18.5k with Backstab.

Fight some Thieves that actually know how to gear and build for dps?

Also, Backstab is the closest thing to instant outside of an ability actually being categorized as instant (e.g. Steal, which can be used without interrupting another ability).

Of course, if Backstab had a real cast time it would be very unwieldy to meet its positional requirements. Which is why one of my composite recommendations from the previous “nerf Backstab” threads was to enable the damage bonus from the sides as well as from behind, but add a “real” (e.g. 1.0s) cast time to Backstab.

That, on top of reversing the damage placement of CND, would provide a very reasonable gap in damage where a player can actually do something, instead of falling over instantly from a 30k+ damage combo that lands within 0.3 seconds at 900 range.

When players hack, or appear to hack, expect a backlash. It doesn’t really matter whether it actually happened or whether it’s even remotely fair to blame “the whole server”.

Fact of the matter is players will behave however they want in a game, and that will typically mean going hulk ragemode on opponents they dislike.

This happens every time highly suspect (or blatant cheating) happens. Unless the server doesn’t have a sack, of course (cough CD, cough).

If I create lvl 1 mesmer and go to WvW, I will be punished with these hits too, but not because backstab is OP, but because a low lvl char sux in WvW, just like that…)

I’m level 80 in full exotics, and backstab crits me for 15k (which is my health pool, fyi).

That said, I could deal with 16k backstabs if they weren’t instantaneous from 900 range. Warrior Kill Shot has a telegraphed animation and requires full adren.

Backstab is instant from 900 range.

That is the problem.

Concerning thieves, a possible combo:
Activate new Assassin’s Signet: 15% on next 5 attacks
Cloak and Dagger activation
Steal (mug)
Cloak and Dagger now hits
Backstab
Autoattacks or Heartseekers

Everything from Mug through Backstab lands within 0.2 seconds.

Also: No Thief can sneak up to you from distance without getting noticed. If a thief gets into steal-range you gotta be prepared – if you don’t have a stun breaker then it’s your own fault.

Lol.

The only counter is to spam dodge against any Thief within 900 range of you, all the time.

Only class in the game where their presence alone demands that you dodge or die. Of course, you have to take the time to identify that the player is a Thief in the first place. Unless you make a habit of wasting all your endurance any time someone so much as walks within 1200 range of you.

You’re just digging yourself deeper into the nerf hole.

There is a vertical limit. Don’t know how people manage to miss this. Maybe they don’t WvW much?

As stated, seems to be in the 450-500 range.

It works but the castbar is quirky under quickness.

GS/Staff is fine for shatter builds in general.

It comes down to what you do specifically within the shatter build.

Sidenote: COF has a direct damage piece too, just because.

Helps tagging.

Btw, Easymode from Anchorhead?

I did play on Anchorhead, but my Mara was Xaos :p.

Edit: Oh, you were a Mara too right?

Carrion will > Rampager for pure shatter. Rampager is relevant if you feel like keeping your clones alive for Sharper Images. Else, more Carrion, IMO.

But why is it excessive? Why is it so hard to understand that the point of the class it to kill people that are not ready to deal with burst damage?

Because you only use 1/4th of your build capabilities and 1/3rd of your resources to auto-kill 80% of opponents instantly.

You should have to use most / all of your resources to guarantee the auto-kills, and have to be ineffective at other combat venues (e.g. escaping) in order to achieve that.

The build does not make sufficient sacrifices for its capability, and does not use enough resources to execute for balance.

Other classes can invest fully into burst kills, and cannot achieve the Thief’s degree of guaranteed auto-kill. Even in cases where that can almost be achieved, the other classes lack the stealth / escape capabilities of a Thief.

Hence, needs nerfing.

Obvious troll is obvious.

If you don’t like the GW2 UI/combat system … play another game ?

Weakness is really good for attrition / anti-attrition fighting though. Durable players typically have low-ish crit chances and negating half their dodges is lols.

IIRC, Debilitating Dissipation puts multiple stacks of those effects on, so 3x Vuln is almost worth mentioning and stuff. Mostly a filler trait though, when you’re aiming for the 15pt or Staff trait.

You know what’s really fun for diving recklessly? Reaper of Grenth human racial. PBAOE pulsing poison + chill for 15 seconds. I’m not 100% positive, but I think it didn’t break Decoy as well. Never really got a good test of that though.

Also, if you have IP and the 10 point Inspiration trait for Vigor on Shatter, you can get almost permanent Vigor by rolling your face over F1-F4 continuously.

1. If a Mesmer is your first class, expect a bit of a learning curve. Mesmer melee survival with Sword as your primary weapon set requires a lot of familiarity and awareness of mob attack patterns and attack animations to be effective.

2. A Mesmer will never be a pure melee unless you want to be weird and intentionally play much harder than you need to. Weapon swap is there for a reason, and Mesmers only have 1 melee weapon (MH Sword). Effective use of weapon swap is critical for maximum Mesmer gameplay, so you will be at mid-range quite often.

Edit: That said you can do MH Sword as your primary weaponset and therefore be at melee range more than half the time, etc.

Shattering is not killed. Basically you either want to build your clones for offence (shatter build) or defense (disable enemies if they’re killed).

Not always true.

The big thing is do not build your illusions to deal damage on death and to deal damage via shatter — that is typically a waste.

Oftentimes if you are shatter spamming, the enemy will kill a lot of your clones — it is kind of inevitable. There’s also the case where you’re not 100% solid on perfectly managing your clones. In which case it’s entirely possible for you to overwrite your clones at certain times (causing on-death traits to proc).

In that case, a defensive (cough, cripple on death) kill trait is pretty effective to pair up with shatter DPS (I mean, think about it: you kitten them up with shatter DPS, or they kill your clones and you get free perma-kite, kittenol?)

The only problem is that the cripple on kill is in the same trait line as 20% mind wrack damage, and who wants to sacrifice pew pew for utility?

Answer: a kitten kitten Shatter build without the GS trait, taking 20 points into Dom, that’s what. Then again, a big reason for that build is to strip boons …

Soloing an undefended supply camp shouldn’t be an issue for any spec of Mesmer.

The point is this:

1. I’m currently running a glass cannon Mantra (read: low survivability) build, and because of it I can’t run into 30 players then run back out. I actually can’t pull crazy stunts with that build, because the build isn’t meant for it.

2. I used to run a glass cannon Shatter build, and I could run through 30 players and run back out (Decoy, Feedback, Blink too OP, Distortion on top, Blurred Frenzy, Focus CC, the winning never ends and Tiger Blood).

And that’s with glass cannon throughout the builds. To me, running into a large group of other players, causing a disturbance, then running back out again, is generally reckless and the fact that you can do that with a glass cannon style build and gear means that you have more than enough tough/vit for “general gameplay”.

Running toughness/vit to me says “I want to tank the 30 players”, which is kind of silly in the first place, or “I want to run through the 30 players, then keep running through the ballista, catapult, and 5 arrow carts so I can drop a portal of doom”. I mean this is actually legit — if you want to excel at running through insane crossfire to drop a portal, by all means stack some Tough and/or Vit. Sidenote: or if you want to man a ram while getting rained on. Why you wouldn’t want a linebreaker build of Guard/Warr to do this instead is beyond me, but then again you may not have those available.

Normal running through 30 players for shaking them up simply does not require Vit/Tough for a Mesmer unless your opponents are super geared with very good target switching and spamming full-throttle. Blink, Decoy, Focus CC, Staff retreat + CS, and Feedback are just too much winsauce. Even with higher-end opponents, that’s when you start being cautious with your diving rather than doing it willy-nilly.

Kick it up a notch with something that’s slightly not-full-glass (e.g. 20/0/0/20/30 spec, rather than 20/20/0/0/30), and I can almost facetank the 30 players for short periods of time (just don’t stand in 5x meteor shower thrown by glass Eles; those can kittening hurt if they RNG own you).

I also like to roll with utilities that matter for more than just myself, which limits some of that on-demand survivability.

This may be the biggest thing. Blink, Feedback, and Decoy, in that order, are the biggest 3 get out of jail cards a Mesmer can play in WvW (and in certain situations Mimic is even better than Decoy).

I could definitely see a lot more Tough or Vit if you are running Glamour spam or any other combination of “I am not using Blink”, and you still want to pull fun stunts.

That’s absurd.

1v1/2v2 is exactly where you need Toughness as a Mesmer. In large scale WvW, durability is completely irrelevant for the Mesmer class, unless you make a habit of diving for portals 24×7.

Mesmers inherently have better survivability than any other class in the game, and large-scale combat with the automatic “attack the other 78 people, not me”, makes it exceptionally easy to survive with 0 +vit/0 +tough.

Edit: Although this probably simply comes down to playstyle and build.

The only thing that needs to be changed about the “turtle” is that most buffs need to only apply to 5 players, same as offensive AOEs. Certain buffs can still be uncapped, similar to some AOEs.

The disparity of “stability x100 players” and “knockback x5 players” is the core issue.

Edit: You can even be generous and go with x7 or x10 for buff spreading. Uncapped is just silly.

The thief doing 8000 dmg in one hit has only that one hit.

Not really. CND and Mug should also do another 5k.

4. You lost half your HP, and they lost plenty of initiative doing so.

6 ini. So they have 8 left. That’s 3 heartseekers

6. Many utility abilities are on long CD.

One utility is on cd, and steal.

people need to register that there is both a visual and audio cue before the backstab happens.

There is no visual or audio cue for a 0.2s event from 900 range.

in my opinion, if you have 3k toughness, that is the time you should complain if a thief instagibs you.

No one has 3k toughness. Perhaps you mean armor?

Bottom line: as long as CND->Mug exists and Mug does damage worth mentioning, then CND->Mug->Backstab will be QQQQQtrain and Thieves will get more nerfs (or buffs and nerfs as the Signet event showed).

There are easy ways to fix this. Make Steal a non-instant ability. Or, put the CND damage at the beginning of the ability and the stealth at the end (separates the damage). Increase the CND cast time along with it (but make the stealth guaranteed with the successful hit at the beginning). Add a real cast time to Backstab, instead of being purely instant. Nerf Mug’s damage. Or split it into direct + bleed damage. Or both.

Nerf Berserker gear.

All of the above?

Zzz.

Agree that the first 10 point in that line suck. Wish there were more useful things to choose for the first major, and the minor itself is bleh.

Should be 20% for the last 50% hp. Or rather, something flat (+250?) for the last 50% hp.

I thought I was one-shotted, but a view of the combat log shows
5093 stealth
427 Double Strike
5500 Cloak & Dagger
9501 Backstab
…various other strikes on the order of 1,000.

That Thief did not crit his Backstab.

Also, for the peanut gallery that hasn’t encountered this build: you have no time to cast Fear Me!. All the damage above lands within 0.5 seconds (with good macros or practice, it lands within 0.2 seconds).

So your only options are to trait for Endure Pain at 25%, get heavy Toughness (at which point you will have about 20% of your HP remaining after the combo, which won’t save you since the Thief has >8 initiative left), or to use EP prior to actually being attacked (e.g. predict a 0.5 second burst that can be initiated at 900 range), etc.

Poor options.

Note: the reported log doesn’t even have a Sigil of Air proc, lulz.

I find Vit more relevant. At glass cannon stats you have 15k hp. Getting that to 20k will usually help more than toughness, unless you manage to heal a lot.

Shaving off Berserker, look to:

- Valkyrie
- Knight
- Soldier

For power + survival stats.

Zomg are you serious? You can change your build to adapt to your opponents?

Holy kitten when did they add this feature to games?

Embolism.8106:

You’d be hard-pressed to find a condition build that does not include Sharper Images, if for no other reason than Deceptive Evasion being so important for spamming Staff Clones. Any condition build that does not take Sharper Images (and Deceptive Evasion) would be much weaker offensively than a build that does.

I think the difference is whether you treat SI as a real source of damage and then itemize towards that (with Precision), or just ignore it.

For example, my old condition (hybrid?) shatter build has 20 in Dueling for DE, but had 0 precision on gear (Carrion). Good power and cdamage though.

I think Malice is easier to refer to since it’s 1 word rather than 2.

1. portals: for these control maps especially treb repair in Khylo, this is hugely OP. portals should either be an ult, or go on a huge CD after one use. this would fix it for WvW as well.

This wouldn’t make much difference for WvW. Please don’t spam about gameplay segments with which you are unfamiliar.

2. sword/pistol/staff/shatter: this playstyle effectively renders every other mesmer build obsolete. not only is this particular weapon combination and its typical shatter build the best 1v1 build in the game, but mind wreck is some of the best AOE burst in the game as well.

Ironically, most scrubby Mesmers believe that Phantasm army is better than Shatters.

But that leads me back to one of my original issues with the class: illusions being killed too easily.

Practice weapon swapping on cooldown. This will significantly increase your clone generation rate. Realize: Mesmers rely the least out of any class on 1111111111 (unless you are primary staff).

You should have sufficient illusions for most situations.

Also, practice using basic defensive mechanisms for your phantasms. E.g. when the fight is about to get fast, drop a Chaos Storm on you + your illusions + the enemy. They will pick up Aegis and stuff which will let them survive twice as long. The bonus daze and chills and poison will make the mobs suck twice as much, so your illusions will last 4x as long as normal, etc.

GS knockback can be used similarly.

Pulling initial aggro and then kiting can also be used.

Deceptive Evasion is kind of a crutch. Shrug.

Is it just me, or are people trying to recommend Rabid gear when Carighan was looking for Condition + Tough + POWER?

iWarlock attack speed was faster than intended. Originally iW was around 6s. A few patches ago they screwed something up and buffed it to ~4.5s. So now they fixed it back to normal.

Deal with it.

So my questions are: is a condition damage build a viable option for a Mesmer to play? Is there enough to work with to make this work for a solo PvE build? Would it be a waste of time? Maybe i’m getting ahead of myself, but if it would work, what would be a good direction to head as far as armor, sessions, runes, sigils, etc…

Yes, although it’s more of a PvP build, since Confusion is much better for PvP than it is for PvE.

Generally:

- Condition damage
- Confusion
- Staff conditions
- etc

Sharper Images usually takes a backseat or is not taken at all depending on build.

SI != condition damage build.

Yeah at the current pricing (by current I mean the last time I checked about 2 days ago), it’s a loss or an extremely small margin. Pretty much not worth the effort at all.

It was pretty good 3 weeks ago when I could immediately resale the Divinity rune for the cost of the item and bag ~2 Ectos plus base material in the deal.

There are other things to make money on, however.

You have a lot of spread.

I would either:

1. Ditch 10 Dom and focus on your SI stuff with Deceptive Evasion, or
2. Ditch 15 Dueling and get 20 Dom to make it a GS power pew pew, or
3. Ditch both and get Staff trait with Carrion and focus on raw condition damage

Edit: There are many other subtle options too, but /shrug.

Build tries to do too many things:

1. Go back to your core build: 15/15 Chaos/Insp + Medic’s Feedback.

2. Now stop and figure out what kind of stat spread you want to want (e.g. your damage vector — power, precision, or condition damage).

3. Then, finish the build.

Closest is human cultural T3 with the underboob :P.

Lol, initiative cost for MIRVing it for 3.5% more damage? Keke. Even if the scaling is kitten, you may be looking at 5-10% more damage, still not worth the Init, especially when it no longer counts as a blast finisher when you split it, IIRC (not 100% positive though).

Snowgoons.6349:

Bottom line is, compared to everyone’s elites DS is definitely up there with moa form and grasping vines lameness. I play a mesmer and a thief and can still respect the lameness :P

Well, that’s a good thing: powerful, potent, counterable.

More elites need to be as strong.

if your machine can’t handle the small number of people in these videos you need to readjust your settings.

It’s pretty common knowledge that the GW2 engine is a pile of kitten when it comes to culling. For example, I get fun culling delays with >60 FPS, <50C temp, and <30 players involved. I’m still at a clean 60 fps with 100 players.

The culling in this game is simply broken atm, and completely unrelated to system specs. It’s an engine issue.

The portal is currently notorious for abusing this engine deficiency. Shrug.

Edit:

20 is not “huge” numbers. KKthx. <insert DAOC PBAOE keep defense 812 v. 100 video here>

Or, KoS video watching a stream of 240 Order run past a hill. E.g. games with older terribad engines could draw players without delay.

If there is a roundabout path to the location, it should work.

• Cough, amount of heal done, cough.

Surewhynot.

But upgrading trash -> veteran is first priority.

Tbh I think a fundamental issue is that players don’t group up, and the game does not do much in the way of pushing players to group up. As a result, credit share for simply grouping up is not very effective compared to other games like Warhammer.

Edit:

On second thought, ANet could not copy the WAR or Rift mechanics. The loot we’re talking about drops when the mob dies. In WAR/Rift, the point was influence / renown / credit, which is calculated later. In WAR, the influence was gained by a DPS, and pooled on them. When a healer healed the DPS, they copied/drew from the pooled influence to gain their own influence.

This wouldn’t work with GW2 since you can’t have the mobs drop loot multiple times just because you press the heal button.

Seems like the best solution for GW2 would be “individual tag flag”, “group tag magnitude” … except no one groups, so.

Note: group tag magnitude would be a bad idea because it would make botting super easy (4 afk players and 1 AOE spammer to get 5x loot).

I mean, the objective reality comes down to this:

1. General PvE is easy. Mobs die fast to burst builds. My record is about 2.0 seconds on a level 80 wolf in Frostgorge. Normal is around 2.5-3.0 seconds. Players with less gear should still drop that kitten in less than 6 seconds.

2. Mesmers are comparatively weak at Orr DE farming. Other classes are also weak compared to the big 3.

3. Mesmers can still farm pretty well at Orr DEs using a build/weapon suited for it. Most casual/scrub/inferior Mesmer players are unable or unwilling to play the build/weapons suited for it. That’s their choice, and any whining about the lack of variety is pretty much irrelevant, since other classes also have to, at the very least, use specific weapons to farm efficiently. Protip: that’s the point of a flexible specialization/build system — you can build towards doing something more effectively … like Orr DEs.

Conclusion: Orr DEs should be tuned to scale better with players (e.g. upgraded mobs). As is, Mesmers can still farm ok, and PvE in general is a joke.

Zzzz.

I’ve been playing on other classes, and to my knowledge so far, I have yet to see another skill whose cooldown is limited by that factor. It definitely feels unintuitive to me.

It’s because Mesmer Scepter 1 is the only ranged chain (or one of the only? I don’t recall another off the top of my head).

Chain abilities require a wait between chains to detect the successful execution of the last step … most chains are in melee so the detection is close to immediate. Scepter … not.

Lol, a lot of the good guilds left JQ. Not surprised at all at this turn. JQ is running on inertia really. I actually said something to that effect in LA the other day — the JQ of now is much weaker than 2 weeks ago, and tons of scrubs/transfers laughed at me claiming that JQ was #1 huehuehe.

Anyways, enjoy the transfers SBI!

Next match should be funny though, can’t wait!

When I see a thief dagger storming, I combo them with my Mesmer and they typically die instantly.

It’s really a red flag for me: “this person is not dodging, kill now lolol”.

Please, more dagger storming, tyty.