Sort of. His background story is fine, but when you’re actually interacting with him he’s flat and ineffective (and every character, including your own, seems to automatically respect and adore him for no particular reason). He’s not a bad character, he’s a badly written character.
Because killing off a character is an easy solution for continuity as well as being some of the lowest hanging fruit on the pathos tree. Even then it doesn’t work when you get a completely different set of npcs to work with every few missions and there's almost always a red shirt among them, giving you little time or reason to care about any of them.
iirc one of the devs basically said that they’re treating it as a collision issue in the environment and that they’re going to fix it on a case-by-case basis, which sucks because it seems to happen kitten everywhere.
“and the mass invisibility compared to the thief mass invisibility skill (not elite!) is not really useful.. I think it’s too weak.”
Agreed, it’s basically a utility skill in the elite slot.
I find the berserker, duelist, swordsman, and warlock to be similar enough in damage output when you use the appropriate stats that I don’t really have a preference. I find the mage and disenchanter to be ineffective, the defender doesn’t mesh with my playstyle, and imo the warden’s advantages no longer make up for its shortcomings.
Phantasmal Ineptitude
Chain skill, 60s cooldown
Summon a phantasm that applies blind and confuse (multiple stacks with a short duration). Chains into an aoe blind shatter (10s window).
(If I actually had my way all of our phantasms would be balanced more towards utility instead of damage and damage would come from the mesmer+clones).
Since today’s patch I’ve found the weirdest one yet: My deceptive evasion clones will sometimes sit in place and do nothing until a mob enters their “aggro range” (mobs and creatures that are in range when the clone was created are ignored), then they’ll run off to attack it.
I do understand why they “fixed” it, there are some fights that 100% uptime on reflection trivializes. I would have said that I expected a smarter solution than this, but I just finished the pve story line so my expectations are pretty kitten low.
Regarding Illusions and AoEs: actually, I find that Illusions do sometimes run away from AoEs. They don’t always succeed, but they do try. Quite cute actually.
They move when they don’t have range/los on their target, but that’s it.
My problem with focus is that I want to use it with Phantasmal Fury+Sharper Images+Phantasmal Haste+Warden’s Feedback. To get Warden’s Feedback I need to pick up Vengeful Images, which is broken by Phantasmal Fury. I also need Phantasmal Healing, which breaks both Phantasmal Fury and Vengeful Images. Catch-22.
I agree that the pistol isn’t a particularly strong offhand, but it doesn’t have many weaknesses either. It’s the vanilla option.
In my experience I find that it’s generally better to pick your mesmer weapons for the utility you want as the damage isn’t different enough to base your choice on.
Moa single-handedly kills a necro minion spec because it despawns all minions and triggers the cd also the elite one plus cancels all elite forms and gives you a free go on the necro. Also in group fights it is simply deadly because you can focus on one while ignoring the other.
Canceling out the elite forms of other players is the best way to use it imo, and trading an elite for an elite seems pretty fair.
For minion specced necros (and mantra mesmers), yeah, that is pretty unfair. It’s also unfair that you have to have the same utilities underwater or the same thing will happen. Imo it’s a problem that needs to be fixed in general, not just for moa morph.
I don’t think the problem is that mesmer elites are too good, I think it’s that most elite skills in the game aren’t actually very good. And even on a mesmer I would gladly trade that elite slot for a 4th utility slot in a heartbeat.
Honestly sounds like a QQ thread to me. Can’t beat it so its OP? Clones don’t even really do any damage, your just complaining because you can’t tell who’s who. Well that’s not OP that’s just a little thing called working as intended.
Right…let me guess,your main is a Mesmer?
You know the damage report in the end?I just got Illusionary Unload 16k damage,everything else load less.Explain that to me please,i suffer from serious L2P issues.
Overwriting clones counts as a clone death and will trigger the appropriate traits.
Shattering clones does not trigger on clone death skills, and clone deaths are not shatters.
Traits which say “on illusion death” are actually “on clone death” and will never trigger off of phantasms.
I am at the character limit in the main post … so I am basically prioritizing bugs that are brought up and deleting them as soon as fixes are in to make room for new ones.
You could put in a link to a different post (or a google doc) to give yourself more space.
If you want a game with a good story you should, for the most part, expect very little of MMOs, “AAA” games, the fantasy genre, and games with lots of graphic violence or “intense” gameplay. In general, games will be driven by either gameplay or storytelling with very few doing both well. edit: You might want to try out The Secret World.
Also, it’s never too early to pick up an author you consider challenging.
A lot of times it is mentioned how he saved character XYZ, did amazing stuff, etc. and that is supposed to make me feel some sort of respect for the character… but it just doesn’t.
I wish I could put my finger on more details. But in general I just feel that in GW:Factions Master Togo “earned” my characters respect and gave the impression to respect my character and the others fighting with him as equals. In GW2 my character is forced to respect Trahearne because the game / some NPCs say I should. And it doesn’t help that Trahearn clearly respects my character a lot… because it comes from someone who I don’t respect…
Hope that made at least some sense…
Spot on. It’s because, as middle school writing teachers love saying, they’re telling instead of showing.
He doesn’t do anything amazing, you’re just told that he’s amazing and that he’s done all these non-specific amazing things.
He doesn’t struggle with becoming the leader of the pact, he just tells you that he’s struggling internally until he tells you that he’s over it.
He doesn’t have a personality, you’re just told that he has one and that you’re instant-super-best-friends.
Telling has its uses, but to make your audience feel anything you need to show them.
Honestly to me I find Sylvari in general to be the weakest aspect of GW2 as a whole. Some of them like Sieran were done well, but so many more of them just feel so very weak as characters being a newborn race and all.
I think half the writing team thinks they’re a naive, curious, and trusting race. And the other half thinks they’re just elves.
In most games, I LOVE randomness (wild mage ). GW2 doesn’t balance randomness well though because it doesn’t account for the fact that randomness is a disadvantage. Randomness is something you either react to or gamble on. If you’re reacting to something random in combat it divides your attention and forces you to make a snap decision. If you’re gambling on something specific happening such as stability and it doesn’t you could wind up in deep trouble, sometimes even costing you the fight.
So what’s good about randomness? Compensation.
Budget. Such a large disadvantage is usually offset by making an ability more powerful than it would otherwise be (more damage, lower cooldown, etc).
Flavor. The randomness of a particular ability may be limited to certain effects, making the ability mostly reliable (eg, an attack has a random damage type).
Longevity. Because you don’t know what will happen, whatever the ability does lasts longer that it otherwise would to give you more time to take advantage of it.
Tactical. You don’t know what an ability will do when you start an encounter and so can’t form a strategy around it, but you find out once the fight starts (eg, pressing the button once makes it lock into one of several possible abilities, and pressing it again makes the ability activate).
In higher levels of PvP (where people are familiar with what their opponents can do) randomness can be an advantage as it makes you less predictable, but unless you have some way to turn that unpredictability in your favor it’s not going to do you any good.
I do agree that something is wrong but I don’t think “overpowered” is the right word; we’re also talking about a major weakness of the class (one that I believe will become much more apparent with time). A mesmer’s effectiveness is largely in the hands of their opponent, meaning a poor mesmer can win a lot of fights they shouldn’t and a good mesmer is restricted by a relatively low skill cap. That’s just bad for everyone in the long run, and I believe it’s why some mesmers are complaining as well. As a mesmer I should be trying to outplay my opponent rather than being dependent upon my opponent not knowing how mesmers work.
You know what? I was wrong. Luck just may be your best bet.
For everyone else, knowing what your enemy can do and how to counter it is one of the best ways to improve in any pvp game. Mesmers are the class that will punish you the most for not knowing their tricks, but that also means you’ll gain an immense advantage by learning what they can do. Knowledge is power.
The key to beating a Mesmer is LUCK, nothing more, if you get lucky to attack the real Memser you win.
No. Luck is ineffective against mesmers who are actually good and unreliable against the ones that aren’t. Learn how to fight them instead.
1) Kill phantasms. They’re responsible for a large amount of a mesmer’s damage output and are what allows a mesmer to play defensively while still hurting you. Phantasms are very weak and you should be able to 1 shot them without blowing your big cooldowns. AoE works especially well.
2) Don’t kill yourself on projectile reflection or confusion.
3) Learn to tell the mesmer apart from clones. It’s not hard, it just takes some practice. The best way to learn is to just play as a mesmer for a while to get used to what clones do. If its moving, it’s probably not a clone.
4) Learn to dodge/los/block moa, and be very glad the mesmer isn’t using time warp instead. You can still dodge roll if you get transformed (it just looks like you’re running faster), so unless you’re a minion master (sorry necros, that actually is unfair) you’re not automatically screwed.
5) When all the clones make a bee-line for you, that’s a shatter. Dodge roll, block, or the like.
6) Run away if you need to. Mesmers have a pretty limited ability to chase.
Don’t rush, don’t panic, and don’t get stupid. You have more control over the fight than you probably realize.
Not sure what to tell you winds. My zerker does damage the moment the cast finishes; before the actual model of the phantasm even appears. It then sits there for several seconds and attacks again.
Mobs to it too. It’s particularly annoying when a vet or champion mob downs me before their name tag even appears >:o
Sylvari are supposed to be this new race that are inquisitive and curious about everything, but most of their lines tend to fall into the “inexplicable mystical wisdom” cliche instead.
There are a lot of good lines that do fit with the race when you play as one, but it feels like some of the writers just think they’re elves. I’m reminded of this comic (the third one): http://www.harkavagrant.com/index.php?id=258
Medic’s Feedback only lasts about 1s though, it’s really ineffective.
Anyway, against large groups you want to kite. Try using crippling dissipation, temporal curtain, and/or phantasmal berserker to apply crippled to groups while letting your phantasms/shatters deal the damage.
Everything mesmers do requires effort. We have some very effective utility for groups, but not much aoe damage (→not good at most dynamic events). We have acceptable single target damage, but it takes a while to get going. We have good survivability, but its all active defense rather than passive. We’re pretty strong in small pvp encounters but don’t scale as well in larger fights (we’re highly vulnerable to aoe damage as well).
Noticed a combo bug earlier while doing Arah.
Chaos armour is not applying correctly to teammates who are in the ethereal field whilst using the the blast finisher from the prestige skill.
When the prestige is used chaos armour is applied to myself but when the prestige ends armour is not always correctly applied to teammates who are within an ethereal field.
The purple bubble often fails to appear when the chaos armor buff is applied. Is it possible they’re getting the buff but it’s not being displayed? iirc blast finishers also have a 5 target limit which pets/illusions count toward.
He’s a walking cliche with no personality who gets FAR too much face time. It doesn’t matter where he came from or what role he plays (well, it does, but that’s not why he’s unbearable), the GW2 story mostly follows tediously generic fantasy plots+themes and is carried primarily by a few interesting characters that get replaced by a lifeless husk. It’s like they took a blank slate PC that you’re supposed to project a personality onto and then made him an NPC.
Every time he appeared in a mission I would actively rooted against him and hope that someone sensible would write him out of the story.
300 is radius, 600 is the total AOE RANGE!
like a circle you know?
The word you are looking for is diameter, or possibly across. Range implies the distance from the phantasm, as when you said “he is indeed kinda of bugged because he moves like if he had a 1200 range of attack.”
I really don’t care if you were incorrect or just unclear though, and I do apologize if I sound abrasive because that was not the purpose of my post. I was simply trying to correct what I saw as a large inaccuracy.
Do you mean traits? If so, Illusionist’s Celerity (5 points into Illusions) is a must have for every mesmer.
I’m personally very fond of Deceptive Evasion 20 points into the Dueling tree (for prerequisites I take Critical Infusion, Phantasmal Fury, and Sharper Images, which are all excellent in a precision stacking build).
Illusionary Elasticity is pretty popular if you’re using the staff and/or greatsword. Imo it’s a tad overrated, but it’s still very good.
If you want to use the focus then Phantasmal Haste is a must-have and Warden’s Feedback is terrific.
Illusionary Membrane+Phantasmal Regeneration is a very strong combination when using the iDuelist (It triggers the regeneration every 3s or so while all other phantasms trigger it ~every 10s).
Restorative Mantras+Mantra of Pain is good if you want to do group healing.
Utility.
The mantras are pretty situational, I wouldn’t bring them without a specific purpose in mind.
The signets are kind of weak but can be useful. Midnight and Domination are the better ones, Illusions is basically broken.
Decoy and Blink are great escape skills.
Mirror Image is very effective at summoning clones quickly if you’re not going to go 20 into the Dueling tree.
I’m not fond of the Phantasmal Defender, but some people find it very useful.
The glamours are all teriffic, although veil and portal are situational.
Illusion of life isn’t that good, but it works when there’s a lot of trash mobs around+people understand how it works.
We have better and more versatile options than Arcane Thievery and Mimic.
I took Vengeful Images and avoided Signet of Illusions and Phantasmal Fury to test it. After the initial Retaliation boon expires, it never re-applies. Can someone else verify?
Phantasmal Fury prevents Vengeful Images from being applied.
Phantasmal Regeneration prevents Phantasmal Fury and Vengeful Images from being reapplied after they expire (but does not block Signet of Illusions).
Signet of Illusions, Persisting Images, Phantasmal Haste, and Empowered Illusions had no effect on other buffs (although Signet of Illusions does take up to 10 seconds to trigger, as others have noted).
Phantasmal Strength could not be tested alone as it comes after Phantasmal Regeneration.
he has a ~450(mayb more up to 600) AOE range of attack..
lol, no. Not even close. 1200 is the range on the staff, 900 is the range on the scepter, 600 is the range on illusionary leap, 300 is the range of a dodge roll, 130 is the range of blurred frenzy. Warden is somewhere around 200.
do some testings be4 posting, u’ll see
You’re right, I should have done more accurate testing before throwing out a number. It’s actually just short of 300.
I think there is a lot of potential with the scepter, but it is a weapon that can only work with very specific play styles. (the most common play styles I have seen players using do not synergize with the scepter’s capabilities)
This is the main problem since it’s the only 1h ranged weapon.
). GW2 doesn’t balance randomness well though because it doesn’t account for the fact that randomness is a disadvantage. Randomness is something you either react to or gamble on. If you’re reacting to something random in combat it divides your attention and forces you to make a snap decision. If you’re gambling on something specific happening such as stability and it doesn’t you could wind up in deep trouble, sometimes even costing you the fight.