Guild Wars 2

Move zig, move zig, take off every zig for great justice!

Zig.

Taldren:

Greatsword’s Mirror Blade requires LOS at the beginning and end of the cast — almost all other ‘norma’ abilities in the game off the top of my head only require LOS at the end of the cast.

This is problematic and causes Mirror Blade to fail casting while kiting or in short-range combat much more than other abilities. In order to stay mobile and use it successfully you have to spin your char to face them twice while casting, instead of once. Awkward.

I find it ironic that half the people in this thread don’t realize that he wasn’t standing at the wall when hit by iBerserker.

It just goes to show you how many Mesmers don’t actually realize how to use the tools that they have.

Personally, I can hit almost anyone and almost any siege in any tower in WvW with iBersereker. My iB crits for 7.5k+ on lowbies. In a Mantra spec my follow up Mind Wrack can crit for up to 5k on lowbies. Phew.

It just means that I don’t want to spend days, or gold, working on -one piece of gear.- It doesn’t matter that I might never have to upgrade, it just feels like a waste of time to spend the few hours a day I have to play before I go to work trying to get crafting materials together to make something…and have nothing, not even a single piece of gear (unless I’ve had an unusually lucky day with drops/been especially industrious about hunting out every little thing I can find to make money) to show for it by the time I go.

One thing about this game that is a different paradigm than other MMOs:

You are supposed to sell a lot of the stuff you acquire on the TP for $, and then purchase a lot of the mats you need for the gear you want. If you’re sitting there trying to get your 80 exotic gear, then be sure to sell off all your copper/iron/silver/gold/platinum you’ve acquired along the way. Sell most of your rare crafting mats (the yellow ones that make runes/sigils). Sell most of your fine materials.

You should have a lot of $ by level 80 if you’ve been selling everything and salvaging all the white items. Most of the mats on the TP are not “overpriced” in general (and make sure to use “custom offer” in most cases).

I don’t think the context of this thread included the notion of NOT fixing WvW design/mechanics/UI issues.

As long as winning in WvW is congruous to accruing the cosmetic rewards, there should be no issue.

Wish I could spend badges to buy dyes.

the game engine will be forced to deal with, when it’s been amply demonstrated it can’t even handle what’s currently in the game.

This is incorrect. The game has a culling problem in the engine that more a silly design thing than anything. Player PCs do not have an issue with the graphical load in most cases, and that would not change with any amount of cosmetic stuff.

I don’t think you realize that all the damage occurs instantly with the Thief initiating at 900 range.

You may not actually play a Thief or play one well, but players that are better at the class can execute this.

Edit: And yes, I can very well blame the 150% damage signet and/or the ability for CND to be pre-casted with Steal not interrupting the ability.

swilkers.5938:

EasymodeX.4062:

Oh, I thought this was going to be about CND-Mug-Signet-Backstab.

You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

So what does that mean? You can do more damage than 28K in two seconds?

I see your 28k in two seconds and raise you 33k in 0.75 seconds.

“Pre-casted” CND (7k), Mug (6k), Signet Backstab (19k), Sigil of Air proc (2k). GG. And they still have 8 or so initiative to play with.

All you need is a full glass cannon build with full Berserker exotics.

Most classes can hit some obscene damage totals, but Thieves have tools to spike further. Warriors can Kill Shot for >20k on glass 80s, and that’s at 1500 range. On my Mesmer I can burst combo 25k in about 2.5 seconds (all at 1200 range). All these numbers assume everything crits ofc.

Sidenote: Thief combo usable at 900 range without the extended Steal range trait. I don’t know if that trait is viable in a maximum burst backstab build (or what they need to trade off for it), but I imagine most would not bother getting it.

Skills don’t pwn in 2 seconds?

Anyone hit by a Thief backstab 30k gimmick combo recently?

Sigh …

Yep. It’s pretty inevitable. Totally agree that 100% map complete should not include WvW, although ANet did it for a logical reason: to get PvE’ers casually into WvW. I think that if ANet cut the PvE NPC farmers (e.g. farming skelks and gryphons for blood), then the problem would stabilize.

I doubt it’s fun for POI-waiters to wait, and I imagine that those particular folks tend to try to help the WvW effort by taking those objectives. The problem is when they “wait” by afking at centaurs/npcs and make themselves useless.

Because the materials that you farm could be sold on the TP?

So the difference between using the TP for crafting and your own time for material gathering is the 10% tax?

You heard it here: Shatter builds extremely OP for PvP.

Oh, I thought this was going to be about CND-Mug-Signet-Backstab.

You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

Legendaries are not post-cap progression. Edit: I guess this gets into the “parsing words” part. Terminology in this thread is adding unnecessary confusion.

I personally don’t care one way or another if ANet adds more cosmetic stuff, although I think it would be a positive addition to the game, so I support it.

The concept of people “only playing for PH4T L3WTZ” is kitten WoW-baby mentality though. Kids that get trained to chase a carrot of +5 stats so they think everyone else has the same values. Absurd.

Yep. Basically an RTS-FPS hybrid, although the FPS part included 10 RPG-ish levels. The commander actually built buildings in an RTS fashion, and all units except basic workers are actual players. It was a very, very good game. One of the few FPS games that had rather good melee combat, too.

The commander could be voted out, and could only troll a short game though. Not congruous to GW2. At best I would suggest that guild keep claimers could determine some general options on keep layout. However, that’s still an unnecessary level of complexity for ANet to implement, when keeps already have dynamic defense strategies (players can choose whether to set up defenses, e.g. siege, for lord room defense, inner wall defense, multi-floor lord room defense, outer wall defense, courtyard defense, etc etc, which gates/walls to cover, which to not really cover).

Enabling a player to control the layout of the map in an MMORPG just sounds ripe for failure.

I think it’s fair because clearly Mesmers are underpowered, according to consensus opinions on the forums. In addition, Mesmer phantasms have already been nerfed so far that they may as well take the skill off the weapons completely. If they gut Berserker as well, they may as well allow a re-roll options to swap classes with something else, like an Elementalist. This would also have the side-effect of allowing players to farm Orr DEs!

^
Stop projecting, IMO.

Well in the Daoc frontier their zone was the size of all 4 maps combined then double it maybe triple it and that was just 1 frontier of 3 (all 3 frontiers were also different and had different types of keeps), it had no queue either the amount of players who could go into there was massive. It was far better suited for 3 worlds like here and something that needs to happen here along with a rank system if WvW is to have any long lasting effect on the game.

Exaggeration. Each Borderlands is about the size of 2.5 DAOC zones. Each DAOC frontier had, what, 5 zones? (PRK, MRK, middle zone with 4keep, then the border keep — so 4 zones). So the current 3x Borderland + EB map layout is roughly the same amount of “MAP” as all the DAOC frontiers.

It feels more condensed because:

1. There are more rails in GW2 (although way less than Warhammer). In GW2 there is a lot of vertical terrain with cutoff points. In DAOC RvR there was mostly open terrain.

2. There are more players with a more consistent zone allocation in GW2. In DAOC RvR, many zones would be “empty” at any given time. In GW2, due to the separate player caps and queues, more zones are more full of players. This increases the feeling of being “congested”, even though the reality is that the total # of players isn’t hugely different.

Edit: Oh, and the teleport timer to get into “away” frontiers. That staggered the population out a bit, furthering the variety of population concentration.

Switch to PvE for a bit? Played some LoL / watched the championships? Went to the bar?

Decided to sit back and cool off for a week? Farm some exotics? Swing around and get 100% map complete?

All they have to do is add stat tracking, publishing on an external website *cough*WoWarmory Camelotherald*cough*, and add in cosmetic kitten for WvW ranks.

Done.

Sidenote: badges already exist as WvW currency.

The reason is supply and demand. More people making said items, less people buying said item – because a large part of the community is hitting 80 and becoming fully geared. This is an important factor for why crafted gear has been dropping in price and or approaching lower proffit margin compared to the materials.

I’m aware of the concept of supply and demand. I’m just saying it’s been tedious the past few days in general ever since the patch where the “loosening of the anti-farm code” was stated. I think that particular piece has accelerated the decline in prices, although I expect it to stabilize in the next week or so.

UI clutter.

To be honest it’s better not to have many rows of “NAME” when you have 50+ people on the screen. They could add in the option to customize the “NAME” display.

The cleanest way to implement it is to change the “Servername Invader” to something more intimidating/kitten based on rank.

As long as player caps and queues exist, PvE’ers should GTFO out of WvW.

Stop damaging the gameplay experience of the WvW players on your server, and they’ll stop kittening you out in chat.

Edit: To clarify, there’s a different between 100% map completers and general PvE’ers. Doing 100% map completion in WvW doesn’t take much time unless you afk in the zone waiting for the POIs to become available. THAT is stupid. Seriously, go do something more productive like farm Orr DEs and come back later to leech.

The primary issue is the NPC mob farmers who take up player cap and idle in the WvW zones for long stretches of time. THAT is detrimental to the server.

There’s a ton of back-and-forth silly arguments in this thread.

Good suggestion for GW2:

1. Add “realm ranks”.
2. Cosmetic finishers.
3. Bonus titles inherent in the player’s display name in WvW (e.g. no longer just “Jade Quarry Invader”).
4. Bonus armor/weapon skins.
5. ??

Edit:

RAs that actually give you power are pretty dumb, unless you really want to see Thief burst combos start to land for >40k damage.

So …

Did you ever play Savage 1?

Oh yeah, 8.x iB whirl plus bonus 3.x Mind Wrack. Boom, >11k. That’s a hit on a lowbie though.

What is appealing about LoL? I’ve been a DotA player since playing frequently (and terribly) in college dorms 7-8 years ago. I play DotA 2 on occasion and watch competitive DotA 2 tournaments. I’ve tried to play LoL, I’ve tried to watch LoL, and I personally don’t see the appeal. However, it’s hard to argue with 200k+ viewers, so what are the intricacies about the game?

LoL is easy to access. It’s basically a dumbed-down version of DotA with fewer and shallower mechanics. However, the smoother interface and simpler mechanics makes it appeal to a much wider audience than DotA. Combine that with free-to-play (and good F2P quality), and LoL has become very popular.

That said, the basics of the game are similar enough to DotA that it’s still fun in general.

In terms of ‘big plays’, at the higher-end of the skill spectrum, it’s the exact same as DotA: big plays and skill in general scales to how good your opponent is. Skill in LoL is the same as skill in DotA: you need more of it than your opponent.

In terms of “pacing”, it’s the same as in DotA: in the scrub tier, it’s slow. In the skilled tiers, it’s faster and more intense.

If you want, I recommend checking out the current world championship tournament streams and recording and start from the qualifier rounds. It’s pretty entertaining to watch. The commentators aren’t 100% accurate, and they have currently stalled the end of the quarterfinals due to technical difficulties, but you should be able to follow the flow of the game.

What’s next in line for big numbers?

Kill Shot has always done more damage than Backstab, tbh.

That aside, the issue with the stacking and Backstab is that certain ability combinations bypass all the restrictions on Backstab — mainly the CND-steal combo. +Mug results in >30k damage within 0.5 seconds in WvW using glass builds.

It’s a gimmick, but >30k will one-shot the majority of players around.

Not only is Basilisk now subjected to removal via traits, it is also removal by all the 20’ish stun break util’s from all the classes. In fact, several of these same stun breaks DO NOT remove Immobilize! Sure you might argue that condition breaks removes Immobilize easily, but in any given 1v1 or group fight, there’s going to be at least 3-4 conditions on the target and only a few skills can wipe multiple conditions compared to the multitude of GUARANTEED stun breaks.

While I agree with the gist of what you’re getting at, your comparison here is poor.

You are focusing very hard on the ability of the target to move, and specifically to dodge. You are generally neglecting the part where an Immobilized target can still use defensive abilities (invulns, blocks, parries, blinds, protection, knockbacks, the list goes on). As a result, the stun is still valuable separate from the Immobilize.

WORTH IT as an elite? Meh. However, saying that Devourer > Basilisk is crying wolf. Stick with the actual argument.

^

Not a lot of build variety IF you are aiming for a multi-PW lockdown burst opener.

If you are using PW throughout the fight when other conditions are met (e.g. the target has no more endurance, use it cold), then your build options expand.

That aside, the issues as I see them are as follows:

1. Quickness is having too much of an impact across the board. It needs to be more accessible (higher uptime), more strippable (make it a boon), and only 33% reduction in cast, for 50% increase in rate.

2. PW needs to be comparatively weaker than Hundred Blades and other attacks. Not only does PW have a stun, it also has 0 cooldown. How much, I’m not going to give an opinion on. Is the 15% nerf too much? Shrug.

3. The fact that PW is competitive with autoattacks (or that autoattacks are competitive with PW) is a problem. That needs to be adjusted one way or another.

That’s why you immobilize as part of the combo.

I’ll randomly point out that the 3 borderlands do have different strategies and tactics as-is.

^

This. You don’t find small fights by looking for other people who are looking for small fights.

You find them by raiding yaks and supply camps quickly until the enemy slowly catches up with 2, 4, 8, 10 players.

You’ll probably wipe eventually, but the point is to see how much rickroll you can execute before you go down.

Same as every other high damage QQ shot: you run full Berserker/Ruby exotics, stack 25 bloodlust (pref superior), and run max power/crit damage traits. Maybe eat some truffles on the side for more lulz. 3 orbs in WvW is a bonus. Keep guild upgrade for more power/stats is a bonus.

iBerserker crits for 8k in the same situations that Warrior Kill Shot crits for 25k, or where a Thief Backstab gimmick build combos for 33k within 1 second.

You only need a handful of ectos, and with any luck you’ll get most back on a salvage. When I went 375 → 400, I lost 1 ecto. On the flip side, I used fewer other mats (mith/fines/gems) than I had to use for any other profession, and the gems in general are easy since you can transmute up.

In terms of quibbling about prices, don’t forget that prices swing a good bit — often up to 20% or more throughout any given 24-hour period.

I make a 10-15% profit on the items I currently make. This include all costs, and buying 100% of the mats off the TP, and selling via the TP.

The last three days has been rough though with a lot of people undercutting for no particularly good reason.

My only beef is that for some strange reason, ANet did not include all intuitive body builds. What I mean is that there are several builds that have smooth -or- muscular versions, but not the other. E.g. Norn female upper right option has no muscular version. Seems odd. Worse on the Human side where there’s a lot of mis-match, and the parallel body builds (where there are smooth / muscular versions) are not next to each other.

Odd.

Bullcrap? How can you possibly have stats like that? You can’t. I’m running around in FULL Berserker’s, including weapons, with 20 in Arms and 30 in Discipline and 20 in Defense and the only number I compare to is your Crit Chance. I can understand pulling that kind of power and toughness if you’re heavily invested in Strength and Defense, and even having 50% crit if you’re counting Fury crit in your base stats, but there is no way in hell you have 210% crit damage. Stop lying.

A full Berserker kit with a glass damage build should have ~250% crit damage. He has 40% less than that, which basically accounts for having 0 crit damage in trait lines.

Full berserker exotics with heavy trait into a precision line will land around 50% crit chance, which is what he stated. The crit damage matches what he should have with 0 in a trait line. The power he is mis-typing: he probably has 3k attack, which is power + weapon damage. He’s probably running ~2100 power and 1k weapon damage. Note: this means no/low investment into a power trait line.

Note: he is talking PvE gear.

IP shatter requires mesmer travel time, which is not instant. I believe that was Terrant’s message: mesmer running travel time <<< GTAOE travel time. If you know where the spawn will happen and can get there, no big deal. If not… well, that’s why I bring Blink to massive DEs.

Well, that’s the thing: if a player is actually “farming” Orr DEs at all, they should know where all the mobs spawn (or where they become vulnerable). That should be a non-factor after the initial learning curve. Knowing where/when the mobs are attackable is easily the #1 most important aspect of Orr DEs, and an order of magnitude more relevant to tagging than class or build.

My iBerserker has crit for around 8,500 damage on a lowbie, not counting bleed procs.

Glass level 80 Ele has some pretty kitten poor HP, around 11000 maybe?

Glass cannon got hit by a glass cannon!

Edit: Assuming you’re even level 80.

I told a Mesmer in my guild that the forums were in an uproar with the patch, with Mesmers saying that it was the end of the class and that Mesmers sucked in WvW.

He fell out of his chair laughing.

Well, not really, but he did laugh.

I laughed too, if that helps.

If you want slightly more concrete anecdotal evidence, I can count on one hand the number of times a WvW commander has asked "do we have any " Ranger/Ele/Warr/Thieves/Engis/Guardians/Necros.

I recall twice in the past month Commanders have specifically told Guardians to do something. I recall once in the past month where a Commander specifically asked for an Engineer (to flip quaggan/kraits).

If you want to throw in a minor plug for Ranger/Elementalists, Comms have asked for water fields for siegers a few times.

Calls for Mesmers in WvW happen on an hourly basis. “Do we have any Mesmers?” “We ready with Mesmers?” “Reflect bubbles gogogo.” “POTAL POTAL POTAL KEKE”. “Time Warp!”

Just a note: iBerserker is not bugged. There is not a single phantasm that requires line of sight to be cast. The difference between Berserker (and disenchanter and warden too btw) is that they spawn on the target rather than next to the player. This can easily be tested in the Mists. Berserker does require line of sight to execute his whirl attack of course, just like any other phantasm attack.

Then, iWarden is bugged. iWarden will not spawn if the Mesmer does not have LOS to the target.

What would just need to be fixed is that the iBerserker not spawn on top of the target w/o Mesmer having LoS on the target. Without LoS, it should spawn next to the Mesmer.

I think this would be a fair deal if iDuelist/iWarlock would spawn in (their) LOS of the target rather than always next to the Mesmer, if we are including conditional spawn locations. It’s no end of /facepalm when I have LOS off a keep wall to cast the phantasm, but they get continuously obstructed. They should move for LOS/non-obstruction prior to casting their attacks (at least for beginning their cast).

This is part of this thread I don’t get. The numbers posted by “mesmer is fine” folks seem to be completely out of touch with my experience.

It is slightly tongue-in-cheek, since I have nearly full exotic Berserker gear (subpar slots are masterwork Berserker, so the stats are close). I realize that many players will not have that degree of gear, so they cannot expect to hit quite that hard. However, exceeding 2k on a crit should be easy, and 2k should be more than sufficient to tag mobs.

I have about 100% bonus crit damage and 3400 attack. That means my crits deal 250% damage. My Mind Wrack number was real, but /shrug, not real for everyone.

Maybe that’s because I’m just wearing rare armor / exotic weapons and don’t have that last wave of armor yet; if the rare?exotic armor upgrade is that amazing, well, perhaps that’s what I’m missing.

Are you wearing Berserker gear? The quality of gear is second to having the right itemization.

The Orr DE race is about direct damage. If you’re running Rampager gear like a lot of Sharper-Image-crutchers, no offense, but you’re Doing It Wrong™. At least for Orr DE.

Elsewhere in the thread, proponents of “mesmer is fine” have yet to address the fact that 2.5 seconds (for full illusions) is greater than 0 seconds (the time it takes most other classes with AoE to use it), the travel time which Terrant brings up,

No. IP Shatter is ZERO seconds. True zero, also. The instant you hit the button, you deal damage.

Engi actually has a half second delay. Ele has RNG on Meteor Shower, and a slight delay on their other AOE. IP Shatter is faster than Engi/Ele/Guardian spam. Too bad it’s on a cooldown, even though you get 2 shots (Cry will also tag since it deals direct damage).

iBerserker is the only question, and it deals damage about a second after you prezz teh button. If you use “target nearest” to get a target, you don’t have to wait for the mobs to fade in. You can target them immediately as they spawn.

In short, its better for the game to feel balanced than to actually be balanced.

Perceptions change and evolve.

Roven Leafsong.8917:

My personal view, however, is that this profession mechanic is not contributing as much cohesion and fun as it could

I would say that in general, no mechanic in the game for any class is “as good as” players imagine in their minds. Steal, Adrenaline, Death Shoud, clones, phantasms, initiative, ranger pets — there’s something to complain about and things to improve about pretty much all of those mechanics, and there always will be.

Shatters could, in general, use improvements, much like almost anything else in the game.

However, I don’t consider them deficient as-is, unlike many players. I don’t think there is any degree of overhaul required to make them effective. Specifically:

– and it often feels to me like it interrupts the ‘flow’ of what my character is actually trying to do.

You have not completed the learning curve of shatters, then.

In the sense of consumable resources, it’s just like a Warrior’s adrenaline, a Thief’s initiative, or a Necromancer’s life-force. That’s completely fine.
The difference with shatters comes from the fact that the unspent resources themselves are far more interesting and valuable (and I would say profession-defining) than the pay-off.

From a playstyle perspective, you realize that Mesmers can “refill” our resource pool much, much, much more quickittenhan any Necro or Warrior with life-force. This is the crux of learning to play with shatters + phantasms at the same time — timing everything so that you reload clones and phantasms immediately on shatter in a fluid rotation.

If I’m in my groove and not playing sloppy (and tryharding the shatters, meaning I use Mirror Images, which I don’t actually use for real PvP combat), I can actually maintain 3 purple bubbles continuously, for a full minute straight, while shattering on Mind Wrack and Cry cooldown (you can get good practice with this farming that kitteny Troll Champion, if you spend time there, bleh). Of course that’s a mix of clones and phantasms. To maximize phantasm uptime with shatters, I’ll drop a Mind Wrack every ~15s.

Sidenote: I do this without overwriting any clones.

The decision on whether to exchange or not usually comes down to simple mathematics about what damage can be expected from the illusions if they can stay alive, and what damage the shatter will offer. Whichever is bigger, you might as well take.

There is no decision:

You either afk phantasms, or you shatter and refresh phantasms for more damage. It is unequivocally more damage to shatter and refresh if you are using 2 phantasms or less.

The only situation where there is any question at all is when you are attempting 3x phantasms, which is unreasonable in most cases, although it does actually become worthy of analysis against the alternative cost of not using clone abilities (where Mirror Blade hits as hard as a phantasm on a shorter cooldown, barring iS+recharge).

I mean, a 4x MW hits a good bit harder than any phantasm in the game. Even harder than iWarden’s full whirl, which is saying something. It is far from a trivial comparison.

ManCaptain.3154:

Cry of frustration has double the recharge of Mind Wrack for no good reason.

I have a build that would be phenomenally overpowered if Cry had as low a cooldown as Mind Wrack. While I could imagine how nice it would be to have a low cd on Cry, I don’t think it would be balanced.

Now that you add 2-6 seconds depending on build

In no coherent build will 6 seconds be added.

You’re looking at, what, 0-5 seconds depending on build. Around 0-4 seconds in most builds.

Yeah, iB is pretty weak. It does like 1k damage with my condition gear. I don’t know why I mentioned it.

Let’s stop discussing how flatulent a phantasm that dies in 1-hit is. Nothing to see here.

No nerfs needed.

I did learn a lot during the one day tour. Its great treasure for me to witness 20 HoDs holding keep hall from over 40 JQs for hrs, and how JQ thieves and mesmers sacrificed again and again to steal the orb then won the battle.
maybe, JQ just did what they should be doing to win, they saw a chance, they took it, it wasnot a plan. maybe, ETs realized they have no chance beat HoD or JQ, so, they chose to turn the world around, just in their own way.

The ebb and flow of combat in WvW is part of what makes the 3-way format excellent. It adds a lot of variety. One week it’s “HOD + SBI” working together. Another week it’s “SBI + JQ”.

The fact of the matter is players, groups, and guilds, go for the objectives that they can win, and defend objectives they can hold. The actual parameters of any engagement and matchup are different, and provide for a lot of replay and fun.

Did ET “throw” the match to give JQ a win and down HOD? Perhaps. Did JQ just outplay both servers? Maybe. Did HOD just throw in the towel? Surely some of that. Is ET fighting for first place or for second? Maybe both?

People can speculate a lot about the motivations of the players, but when you’re honest with yourself on the field you know that you just want to fight and take whatever you can get. In this matchup, there’s an undercurrent of making HOD eat dirt, but ET has held on as strongly as they’re able to and there has been nonstop fighting between ET and JQ where they find each other. ET’s even held half the PPT at times.

A couple forum trolls here and there do nothing to diminish the actual efforts of players in the game reach for victory, but it’s all fun eh. <3 RvR.

I wouldn’t roll a Mesmer based on the idea of iBerserker retaining its ability to ignore LoS.

True that.

(Ab)using it while it lasts though.