Guild Wars 2

Advent.6193:

The theory is that ANet was worried about the ability to double-dip Swiftness from one’s Curtain. Meanwhile, Guardian’s Symbol of Swiftness stacks fine with other sources of the buff – it’s just Mesmer what gets the shaft.

The most convincing reason for that is that Symbol of Swiftness is AoE, while Temporal Curtain is a line. It does mean that Symbol of swiftness “pulse” its boon (which cause its own set of problems) every second. Whereas the Curtain doesn’t pulse: it buff anything that touch it. So if TC was made to work as SoS (ie pulsing), you could run through it and gain no boon most of the time (easy to cross it in less than a second). And if TC where to self stack, you could enter/leave it quickly and stack swiftness at a crazy, crazy rate. In fact, it did in beta, and you could get multiple hours of swiftness.

They could in fact apply a debuff to go around that, but current implementation isn’t as mind boggling as it first seems to be.

Don’t forget there are a lot of casual, PvE players. Those might be very satisfied with the profession, regardless of game balance. The class is flashy, makes dragon teeth and meteor fall from the sky, and it is good enough for most casual use. So I think ele could very well be the third most played (not just created) profession. It would still mean nothing regarding game balance, though. Like “risen thrall” as the most dangerous creature is a joke: most casual won’t visit high level fractal or farm champion karkas or whatever. But they still go to Orr for personal story, for ori/omnom, and there are a lot of thralls there. The high risk exposure compensate the low threat level.

haviz.1340:

With current targetting system it’s annoying to use single targetted skills (like lightning strike) on a real mesmer.

Ctrl+T is your friend

haviz.1340:

Also, before heavy condies overload, mesmers were a profession running zerk/zerk amulet with 20/20/0/0/30 aka “virtually no passive defense” yet they were more survivable than lots of other professions.

I haven’t seen anyone denying that here.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

I was speaking from the F1-F4 skills

I noticed. I was commenting on the clones as defense. Shatters aren’t clone. Shatter use clones. So when talking about mesmer’s defense, clones aren’t it. Shatters are.

You are forgetting that you will need Clones/Phantasms up to shatter them, So it depends on HOW they are used for them to be offensive or defensive.

Notice the part when I say clones are a resource? I don’t think I forget anything.

We have plenty of ways to avoid attacks.

Yes we do. But clones in themselves aren’t one, except in very rare occasion (like blocking a backstab with a clone). The fuel don’t get you anywhere, the car does. Clones are fuel.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

Where is this 2nd health bar?

On the necro. The initial post was about all classes’ defenses. Mesmer one being depicted as “clone”. Which it isn’t. Lots of invul/dodge/reflect/vigor/stealth is, sometime using clones.

TL;DR: mesmer defense is good but summing it up as “clones” isn’t really adequate. Having sidetracked this thread too much with this one irrelevant comment, I won’t speak about it anymore. Sorry for the hijack.

(relevant part of the post starts here)

Back to ele!
I was thinking, since attunement CD seems so important (at least to me), we could replace the arcana passive bonus to something still useful but less vital. Not all class stat is about CD: warrior get burst damage, ranger get pet stats. We could get something like this :
- each attunement has a naturally reduce CD compared to now (like 20 or 30 point in arcana? TBD);
- each attunement gets you the “on attunement” boon (the arcana trait would need to be replaced);
- arcana passive bonus: + attunement boon duration.
This way, attunement dancing is naturally more accessible (after all, it is the class mechanic) but it still get boosted by the trait line. You could get nice amount of protection for example with earth attunement, but not having it wouldn’t makes you ineffective.
It wouldn’t solve all the ele build problems, but I think it would makes investing less in arcana more viable.

Thoughts?

RedSpectrum.1975:

Someone verify (i’m on a role in these forums tonight) mesmers have a BS counter where they stand in their clones. Can we just prevent this by CnD’ing the clone away?

Far, far away (a whole 8 post above):

As of now, BS can be stopped by using pets/clones to “eat” the attack.

;)

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

Retal, Confusion, Invul – Then you get to them confusing the target giving you enough time to re-position, heal and attack. The clones are VERY helpful for that.

I was responding to:

Whereas other professions have high health pool, stealth, clones, a second health bar, and short CD invuln and evasive skills in their weapon sets

Clones don’t have retal (only phantasms do, and it seems bugged).
Confusion: 1 stack on death isn’t defense. Shatter confusion come from the shatter. just ahving the clone don’t inflict any confusion.
Same for invu: the shatter is a defensive tool, not the clone in itself, and you can shatter phantasm too.
As for not distinguishing mesmer from his clones… does it really happen, ever? Against a good player, I mean. Clones are so obvious.
Clones, by their mere existence, don’t add any defense. A more correct sentence would have been “(…) high health pool, stealth, distorsion, a second heatlh bar (…)”
Mesmers do have strong defensive tool, but just creating clone isn’t one. Clones are resource. Like “initiative” isn’t a defense for the thief, it’s a resource used for defense.

Victory.2879:

If the drop rate in wvw for new materials is as low as these are then forget it, you’ll never make a new set.

Except it apparently won’t have any “drop rate”.
From the official blog post quoted above:

You’ll receive these materials as guaranteed rewards once per day per unique location (…)

For example, capturing camps, towers, and keeps in WvW will earn you these crafting materials.

So there you are, guaranteed non random access.

zencow.3651:

The side effect trait were mostly useless hence the reason they got merged since there was no point to take them anyway, hence by that logic merging the aclarity and the mostly redundant +10% damage traits would be the best way to go. Having weapon-wide CDR on ele would be a tad too strong.

I wasn’t talking about why it was so, I was correcting the misconception that “everyone else had something more”. It is plain false, and it doesn’t help the discussion.
I’m not against upping the alacrity, but I think it require more than “just merging with +10% dmg”. It is the easiest solution alright, but not really a good solution. Earth and water, particularly, would need something else to make them attractive. Why not, for earth, a +200 condi damage, like mesmer scepter? It would help the lacking condi builds.

Leuca.5732:

There’s nothing to be wary about

Yes there is. Not necessarily for you, but enough nerf have been asked “because skill XX does the same but better for another class” for it to be dangerous.
Lightning Flash (pre-nerf, when it did stunbreak) was on a longer CD than Blink for the same apparent utility, but mesmer has no swiftness, and Flash (traited) can get vigor, regeneration and remove a condition.

Leuca.5732:

You eventually have to compare professions to even get close to managing balance.

That’s exactly my point: one has to compare professions, not individual skills.

Treborlavok.3504:

I still haven’t heard or seen a good reason to continue to run 30 into arcana. I have a few builds I like to run that require either 5-10 into arcana and that’s it. Then you have your classic 30 arcana builds that still do OK but I feel like they can and are being replaced slowly. The sooner ppl realize they don’t need 30 on arcana the better.

:)

For me, the main benefit of 30 in arcana is the attunement CD reduction. The class design makes us so much powerful when not sitting in one element, that not taking the CD reduction is a serious drawback. It is in no way necessary, but we do lose a lot by not taking it.
Plus, the fact that all arcana traits benefit all attunements is a nice cherry on top.

Silver.4798:

the “burst” traitline. Stealing applies poison for 10s? Poison applies weakness? How is this helping burst?!

I believe that poison is linked to the “+condi duration” of the trait line, and to the fact that poison impede healing. The trait line seems less a burst line (critical strikes cover that aspect better) that a “direct damage” line, and (on the paper at least) poison makes sense here.
Plus, since condition damage and duration are both minor stats, they will always be splitted and accompany another stats not directly linked to condition. It is true for every profession.

As of now, BS can be stopped by using pets/clones to “eat” the attack. A cleaving BS would prevent that. Now, it being a good or bad thing is another question.

silvermember.8941:

Nerfing bunker was a good idea. My point is that playing bunker was the result of the fact that we were not viable with anything else. Bunker ele existed because all our other options were just plain bad. We couldn’t be glass cannon because we lack the cannon part, we couldn’t do great conditional damage because well we only have burn and earth and those are separated by a 15-30 seconds.

My point is, nerfing a certain spec was maybe a good idea. Not nerfing the class as a whole. A nerf need to be targetted to a problem.

zencow.3651:

They should just merge the Alacrity traits with the +10% damage while in X attunement traits. All the other profession’s weapon damage & effect + CD traits have been merged. I don’t see why it hasn’t for ele.

Ranger’s and Engineer CD reduc don’t have side effect. Warrior CD reduc have conditionnal boni. Half of the Guardian’s and Necro’s CD reduc traits don’t have side effect, and guard’s mace/necro’s scepter can’t get reduce CD at all. Just FYI
A flat +damage in water/earth isn’t that hot. Instead, we could either merge with other traits, or create new side effects. Or just reduce the base CD of skills that deserves it (like focus’ gale…).

Leuca.5732:

Let’s compare two similar utility-type skills from offhands available to light-armor professions.

I would be warry of such comparison. It can give some strange results.
Professions are a context, and comparing outside of it is risky.
The pistol is an offensive OH for the mesmer, with a stun to keep the ennemy in the fight (something it really lacks). Focus is a defensive OH for the ele, and ele doesn’t lack defensive tool. Plus, when gale is on CD, you can use other defensive move provided by the focus (obsidian flesh, magnetic pulse, freezing wind, whirling wind…).
Not saying gale is good, mind you, but there is often more than raw stats when comparing skills.

DigitalMaster.4870:

Why would they nerf something that doesnt show up in structured PvP anyway?

there is hardly any balance in WvW

They still nerfed confusion damage in WvW by 50% not so long ago. So I would say it’s entirely possible for them to nerf on WvW basis.

Funny, “you just have to cleanse/stop attacking, duh” is exactly what most mesmers where saying before getting their confusion application skills/trait nerfed to the ground. And they could only reliably get about 10-12 stacks, for 3 or 4s.
Fast forward to now, where you can put reliably 15+ stacks permanently.
I would really, really be surprised if this rune doesn’t get the nerfbat (at least an ICD).

WereDragon.6083:

I’d buy some minion altering books from the gem store in a heartbeat. Always wanted just normal zombies. I feel more like a flesh-shaper then a raiser of undead.

The absence of “normal zombie” is tied to lore, and probably won’t change. Necro not raising dead, but merely using them as source material to create something else, dissimilar in appearance, is a part of why they are accepted in modern society. They are (in lore at least) very strict about that.

silvermember.8941:

you totally right a nerf is a nerf except that the mesmer actually need it and still need it. Any class where you rely on an AI to passively deal damage shows a significant flaw the the combat system.

When you are OP getting nerf just means you are trying to bring balance. When you are the elementalist getting nerf from OP to nothingness then that is different.

The mesmer has the benefit of changing once the meta changes after pax, elementalist there is no sign anything will change and the elementalist has a lot of fundamental problems that require a lot of work and the fine folks at Arenanet don’t seem interested in doing the job. I mean why would they that would be admiting they royally kittened up.

Be careful with broad swipe opinions: a lot of players saw ele as totally OP and found the nerfs totally good. No class deserve that. Most mesmer skills/trait are far remove from OP. I agree that phantasm aren’t that interesting, but it doesn’t inherently makes them OP (plus, ranger pet, necro minions, etc… AI isn’t a problem except for the pet owner).

And when you say: " elementalist has a lot of fundamental problems that require a lot of work and the fine folks at Arenanet don’t seem interested in doing the job" -> you’ll find the exact same thing being said in the mesmer forum. And ranger too, and probably a few other. Everyone think it has the short end of the stick. Don’t dismiss others just because you have your own problems

That being said, I’m not sure the ele need that much change. Viability is just a few damage/CD numbers tweak away.
Build diversity, on the other hand, is another thing entirely, and should really be worked on in depth. But that is true for most classes.

This update doesn’t require zerging. In fact, beating the invasion is easier when not zerging, and roaming in middle-sized groups. Pick your own fun

Mesmer illusions spawned on certain ennemies don’t have any AI, and stand in place without doing anything.
Confirmed on Lupicus’ grubs & locusts, Bloomhunger’s spirits and the Archdiviner’s minions while working perfectly fine on their respective bosses. It makes me think it has something to do with summoned ennemies.

It makes it quite hard to stop Lupi from eating grubs when a good chunk of the mesmer’s DPS vanish

It probably is the same as all the “when you heal” effect, that only take place on skill #6 use instead of any heal. More a tooltip imprecision than a bug, I think.

TRON.1085:

Wallach.7291:

I’m pretty sure all gauntlet bosses are immune to immobilize.

It’s definitely a bug because sometimes CC of any type works and sometimes the same types of CC don’t…

Then you have how often meat is being thrown is extremely rapid to the point it looks like a bug, as well as meat being thrown right on top of chomper making the achievement stupidly RNG luck to get.

Immunity to immobilize for all gauntlet bosses as been confirmed as intended by a dev. Apparently, allowing it woud have make the fights trivial (understandably).

As for the second point… yes. If the meat throw goes into machinegun mode, you are basically screwed.

silvermember.8941:

Except that mesmer WAS OP. A nerf is not really a nerf IF the class being nerf was OP. Nerfing an OP class simply amounts to making it equal to everyone else. The mesmer for the first time ever is a victim of not being part of the CURRENT meta, a meta that will change after the PAX tournament, that is it.

Two things:
1) a nerf is a nerf. It might be deserved, but it doesn’t make it less of a nerf.
2) I was commenting on a point I misunderstood from Leuca, which he clarified later, so that became obsolete and can be ignored safely

silvermember.8941:

The situation the elementalist has is far more dire. And just for the record the elementalist have receive far more nerfs than any class in this game. WE got nerf after the first beta and we have been continously nerf since then. The only buff we have receive was being given a mediocre trait called “fresh air” WHICH only works for 1 weapon set or at least is only effective on 1 weapon set.

I wouldn’t say eles got “far more” nerf than mesmer, and ele too was called op in it’s time (not taking side here). But it doesn’t relate to the topic: whatever buff/nerf happened, the current state is a fact, and it’s what needs to be changed (because, yes, here I’m taking side: ele feels really UP in PvP).

Leuca.5732:

I think you misunderstood what I was saying.

Indeed, and I wholeheartdely agree with you in this light

Leuca.5732:

Also, the funny thing is that mesmers in general are stronger than eles now. They have much more variety when it comes to choosing traits and weapons, greater access to conditions in a condi meta, as well as a greater number of ways to provide team utility. Their burst is pretty fast and effective without blowing 3 utilities and all survivability and staff is still an absurdly powerful defensive tool with a pseudo stun-break every 6-8 seconds.

I think you overestimate a bit some things. Mesmer access to condition is better to only the ele one, the “fast and efficient burst” require to blow a lot of things (mirror image (and lose this stunbreak btw), a dodge, the so-cool staff pseudo stunbreak, plus another clone-generating skill of your choice). You could say it doesn’t matter much, but misconceptions won’t help balance (I personnally think it’s what killed ele in the first place).
The problem with mesmer is mainly it’s condition defence, and it’s why it should go up in the chart when the meta calm down. Condition defence is about the only thing the ele get right in this meta, so I don’t really expect it to get better

TL;DR: Leuca mostly got me covered, ignore me :P

TGSlasher.1458:

Azunai.5974:

What I think Anet should try is to remove the cdr per attunement traits and just add traits that reduce skills for a weapon.

Nice thought, but what tree would it go into? Arcane … forces us down there further.
Fire? Not many use it.
Air? Good for GC but not bunker.
Water? Good for bunker but not GC
Earth? Similar to fire

You can’t eat your cake and have it. Either you put the CD reduction trait in arcana (and pidgeonhole eles further), or put it in a specialized tree. Most other professions have their CD reduction in trees not suited for all build, if you really want to go their way you have to suffer the drawbacks too. Plus, it would be the occasion to make people take more of those unused line (like fire).

JanNier Kryn Yaren.7968:

Yeah while now warriors with greatswords and main hand sword and mesmers with blink and others, thiefs nfiltrator’s Arrow can run like anyting because they have short cooldowns, I find it an hypocrisy nerfeing the elementalist for reason of being too powerfull when other classes can have the same jump away tactics with shorter recharge, hell this brings back “Smiter’s Boon” to mind, got nerfed into a real oblivion in pvp all due to ONE build. And now gw1 wont even have its must needed classes update. Breaks my heart seeing the games broked down like this.

Don’t get too hasty. Mesmers have virtually no swiftness and no passive speed boost. Blink is good, sure, but even with it elementalist travel more quickly. Way more.

Leuca.5732:

Plenty of professions have big effects with relatively low cooldowns that haven’t been adjusted as the skills have gotten stronger. The elementalist is fairly alone in this regard.

Say hello to the mesmer, and its streak of 10 months of constant nerfs. Elem isn’t alone
And don’t forget ele still have some sick skills too. Magnetic pulse (earth focus #4) clean conditions, blast finisher, reflect projectiles and deal aoe damages on a 30s CD, traitable at 24. Sick. But the problem with ele isn’t as much individual skills as synergies (focus is quite meh as a whole, despite magnetic pulse and swirling winds).
With 20 weapon skills, some are totally underwhelming, and some are very good. Before tweaking the traits, I would advocate making all weapons skills worthwhile, then balance around them.

IIRC for this, it needs to be a cleaving attack. I don’t think backstab fall into this category, does it?

Master of Timespace.2548:

The retarted phant spam spec should definitely be tuned down .That build is cheesier than d/p thief and about as dumb as a Spirit Ranger.

<sarcasm>
Before such brilliant argumentation and convincing proofs, ANet won’t be able to do anything but nerf it.
</sarcasm>

Pyroatheist.9031:

Yep, some good bug fixes this patch. Editing the OP now.

While you are at it, could you add the still-present bug that prevent illusions to do anything against summoned enemies? (lupi grubs, archdiviner minions…)

Gallrvaghn.4921:

You can’t go full offensive in your traitline (Fire and Air) because an ele survives through sustained healing (due to lowhealthpool) and boons (hence attunement dancing with Arcana trait is very beneficial). However, the ele’s weapon sets don’t have that much defensive capabilities other than healing which can be negated with too much CC, poison, and burst AND also requires investment in Healing Stat. Whereas other professions have high health pool, stealth, clones, a second health bar, and short CD invuln and evasive skills in their weapon sets and any of which I don’t think is dependent on any Stat at all. Thus, only pros and some with macros can manage to pull off Zerker Fresh Air Eles. The rest can find it really hard to survive without traiting for Water and Arcana.

Agreed, but what does the clones have anything to do with suvivability? They are condition applier/shatter fodder, they don’t add anything to defense.

That being said, arcana indeed totally overshadows the 4 other trees. Not only are the best trait there, but those are also not attunement specific (they vary with the attunements, they don’t stop working because “wrong attunement”). The other trees mostly force you to chose between benefiting from your traits or benefiting from the different attunement skills. Neither option seems good. I’m not sure a breakdown of EA in specific trees would solve the problem. This particular trait would not overshadow the other anymore, but the sheer versatility of the tree compared to the others would still be there. I would rather see replaced most of the “get/do XX when in YY attunement”, in favor of attunement wide or when-switching traits. Those would make the best of attunement versatility.

F1-F4 are toolbelt skills.
Indeed, 1-5 don’t make any circles

Nuka Cola.8520:

About 3 months ago i had a warrior stomping my clone instead of meeeeeee /success!

You don’t say… one time, I got a mesmer moa-ing a clone instead of me!
Those are one-in-a-lifetime occurrence, but they are priceless.

silentnight warrior.2714:

I dont think mesmers are that biased. There are some good points in this tread.

I intended my remark more as a joke, but I have only one question to you: how are phantasm OP in any way?
Not “different to something else”, but really “OP”? because if it ain’t OP, there is no need to change anything. Originality isn’t a game balance concern.
If it is OP, in which way? Would the dodge really solve it, since phantasms are really different from one another? Would the iDefender and iDisenchanter really need this “balancing”, when they do next to no damage? How would the mesmer meta change with that (hint: it was tested already, and it wasn’t pretty)?
Well, that was more than one question in the end :P

TL;DR: don’t fix what isn’t broken. Current mechanic is intended. Some phantasms might need some adjustment, but the generic phantasm mechanic doesn’t (not in this way, anyway).

Carighan.6758:

Sense?

In a nerf-mesmer thread? Have you that much faith in humanity? ^^’

Dunno for the second one, but for the first, being KD is one of the possible outcomes.

Gandarel.5091:

The almost everybody stands for almost everybody, not actually everdbody. I thought this is obvious. Check the feedbacks on the lore + living story forums about all the LS contents.

The feedbacks, as has being stated, is more often than not conveyed by people who don’t like something. It’s like checking the “complaint department” of a company and saying “nobody like our products, they all come in infuriated”. Add to that the still numerous “good job ANet” or “Best update so far” posts to prove you wrong.
Between that and the fact most of GW2 players don’t come to the forum, ever, I stand my point. You are in no position to talk about “almost everybody”.

Putting “almost” in a sentence isn’t a card to get out-of-sources free. It’s just a weasel world to be able to dismiss people who have different opinion as “just a vocal minority”, like you just did (maybe unconsciously).
As long as you don’t bring numbers, you are just stating your opinions. There is no shame in that, so why disguising it as “the community’s opinion”?

You get the achievement whether or not the invasion succeeded (those for “stop invasion in XX zones” and “stop invasion in frostgorge/fireheart” at least, plus those for Vorpp).

As for rewards, you get (data from personal experience):
- 10 scraps or 1 chest for wave 2 reached but not beaten and support creatures not beaten;
- 40 scraps or 4 chest for wave three reached but not beaten, support creature beaten;
- 50 scraps or 5 chests for winning event.
From that, I guess that you get 10 scraps or 1 chest for each wave/support wave beaten.

You don’t need to personally beat scarlet to win the meta event, as long as someone do it you get those full rewards.
Scarlet has her own reward in the form of two yellows once a day, but you can’t defeat her before beating wave 3. She appears before, but always leave at fixed % of life. Don’t waste time on her.

How it does work: an invasion is announced, server-wide. The invasion begin, and every overflow created in the next 10 minutes will have it, too. If you try and join the area after those 10 minutes, and the main server and all overflow created in the 10 minutes are full, you’ll end up in an overflow on which the invasion isn’t occurring. You’ll then get the message about the invasion happening somewhere else.

That’s the theory anyway, we can’t exclude the possibility of bugs stopping the invasion from happening on some server/overflow.

Since it is account bound, I fail to see how it might impede you

Gandarel.5091:

It’s not like some people don’t like this ‘new direction’, it’s like almost everyone hates it. And that’s a difference.

The same difference as in “I speak for myself” and “I am omniscient and know what everybody think”.
Please, don’t speak for me or anyone that isn’t you, because apparently you aren’t omniscient, and this new direction isn’t as hated as you make it out to be.

Korval.3751:

3. Successfully complete this 45-minute event 13 times.

Just so you know, failed events count too. It’s more like a “take part in 13 invasion meta-events” achievement.
Hope it eases your pain

KeybladeMaster.3148:

wow it makes so much more sense now. she isn’t a rando, she was mentioned in the_ hard dungeon I couldn’t beat_.

FTFY
Albeit hard, he dungeon was doable (soloable, even). So Scarlet is a valid plot character, foreshadowed and all.
Wouldn’t have hurt to have a mention of her when talking to the jailed Mai Trin, though.

In GW1, it was a curse that did damage to the target each time he cast a spell. It could do up to 140 damages, on a base health pool of 500. Nasty.
More info

Xovian.8572:

Pyroatheist.9031:

Phantasmal Haste

• This trait does not affect the iSwordsman or the iMariner

Should also include iDuelist.

Pretty much the rule of thumb with single handed weapons: You can not reduce cooldowns by more then one cooldown trait. No matter what type of combinations you use. Tends to make quite a number of the limited amount of traits per skill set useless.

See this wiki page for the how and why of Pyro’s answer
Short version: tootlip is confusing.

It’s ok, since it is not clear at all to begin with ^^

And it is bugged. Not all phantasm get 20% IAS, if any at all

I happened sometime to be left with 1hp instead of instadown. I don’t know how to interpret that :/

@Solar Brink: though hard to pull of, it is possible to zap multiple clones with a single light patch. Seen it happen.

Palu.3405:

I think you’re all overreacting to these runes. Confusion is a condition and nothing more. It used to be that it was fairly exclusive to engineers, mesmers, and asura, and yes, this rune allows most classes to have access to it. We as mesmers are not the sole owners of this condition, nor does allowing other classes access to it hurt the mesmer in any way.

Just for historical accuracy, mesmer were the only owners of confusion at first (in early betas). it was introduced as a signature move, like Aegis was a guardian-specific boon. Then things went like we know, for better or for worse (not taking position), like aegis got more widespread.

/2 cents

Viable : yes. About every build you can think of will be viable.
Now, optimal? Well, it depends. The pistol is great for tough opponents, like dungeon (mid-)bosses, but not that much for hordes of wimps. So I would recommend, like Demented Sheep, to have a second weapon set and/or to switch out pistol for a focus from time to time, to adapt to the situation.

For retaliatory shield, don’t forget mimic in the equation. 4s of block isn’t anything to scoff at

About BF, it is due to the change from invulnerability to dodge. Dodge doesn’t avoid “on hit” effects like the stun of static aura, or retaliation. So, no bug here, just a nerf.

About the warden, though, if it is confirmed it is a bug. If anything, the warden should be stunned, not the mesmer.

Ethics.4519:

Xavi.6591:

The fix to veil is a nerf imo.

Agreed

With Veil CD, it’s not like we used it primarily for the combo field, so at least it isn’t a massive nerf.

Fancia.3746:

• snip *

Again, you didn’t see the code nor the condition it was developed under. I stand my ground.
Maybe there was only one developer which had impossible time constraint and no anterior knowledge of the application, and had to cut corners, and he manage to make (more or less) something work when most other wouldn’t have even the base of their evolution. Maybe some manager told the development team “do this” when it was stupid, and they didn’t have any possibility to voice their disagreement. Maybe not, and they totally botched the job because they are bad at their job. We can’t know, we can just guess. Yes, some error are really suspicious, but openly insulting them on the ground of guess is rude. Incredibly rude. At least, attacking ANet, I would have understand: they are responsible for the problems, whatever they are, as the product provider, and they can hand down the blame to whoever deserves it. But the developer? Really?

Johnson.3874:

I play this game this the first beta event. I saw how it was running smoothly and with very few issues. Then I saw the release, and every day since then has brought its share of bugs, sometime new ones, sometime older ones coming back again.

I was there in BWE1. Well, not at first start, since it was so buggy one couldn’t play at all!
Then it went better and better with the time. And the current state is way, way ahead of the beginning of the BWE. Yes, new features have bug, but did you notice that they where, well… new features ? That haven’t been extensively tested in a controlled and large scale test? (lack of test realm make for a better complaint)

Johnson.3874:

And it may surprise you, prepare yourself, but I actually spent money on this game ! Yeah I know, it’s incredible right ? When you pay for something, it’s pretty common to have expectation about the quality of the product. Probably something you didn’t know.

Note I didn’t say “don’t complain”, but “don’t insult a person you know nothing about”. You are totally free to ask compensations to ANet (your provider) about what they sold you. The developer didn’t sell anything to you.

Johnson.3874:

What do I care about their working condition ? It’s their work. If I develop software for a client, do you think I’m gonna say “Sir, you don’t know my working conditions, if you pay me and I give you bad work, it’s not my fault.”

Yes, his working condition is none of your business… as long as you don’t attack him personally for thing that are in direct relation with his work conditions! The problem here, is some people assume that “not having bug” is easy as just double checking a tweet before sending it. I want to remind them that actual development work is way more complex and stressful than that.

Johnson.3874:

And btw, their “incredibly complex system” is THEIR work. THEY did that. You don’t do something utterly complex and then say it’s not your fault. It’s your work. Either you did it good, or you don’t. Period.

Nope. The system is the work of tenth and tenth of people. Those who laid the basis of GW2 may have quit long ago, and it’s doubtful any one person know all of the code of GW2.

Johnson.3874:

I am willing to be understanding on a lot of things that don’t work as intended. But seriously, events not progressing ? Still the same thing as day one. Chest that can’t be opened ? Day one.

And don’t think that I just have unreasonably high expectations. I have always said, and I will continue to say, that I would have preferred less content, less frequent, and better worked out, rather than incredibly buggy events every months. Plus, when living story was only a one man job, I could understand the flaws. Now there are multiples teams working on it, and it’s still the same thing. So if your standards are low, and you are willing to spend your money on stuff that never improve, be my guest. But don’t project that on other people

I might not have been clear enough, sorry for that. I’m not talking about standard of quality and acceptance of errors. I’m talking about civility and informed opinions.
It’s alright for you to see those problems as unacceptable (for some, I totally agree). But it isn’t alright at all to insult peoples. Even more on ground you don’t know much, if anything, about.
Not you in particular of course, it is a general statement

TL;DR: software development is a stupid, stupid world. Horrible things happens all the time. Sometime because of bad developer, sometime because of bad managers, sometime because of bad specs or testing. More often a mix of all. Result is a faulty product, and being mad is ok. Insulting some people we don’t know anything about because “they probably are the cause” isn’t. Voice your disagreement, but keep it civil.

Johnson.3874:

You guys really are a bunch of amateurs…
This, plus the numerous bugs with the Gauntlet. Geez, I don’t even know what to expect next. Nothing ? Is that good enough ?

Because insulting the devs will help the process, and you know the code and their working conditions well enough to be affirmative they could have done better. Wait, no, you are just being rude for the sake of it!

They have to deal with an incredibly complex system, here, and update it every two weeks. Of course there are bugs. Never ever expect perfection from a computer system. Even space rockets blow up because of bugs, and I don’t think the NASA (or any other space agency) is “a bunch of amateurs”.

Meglobob.8620:

Its been totally NERFED now, you can’t get even near a gold per hour, not worth doing at all…

Just blues/greens + 6s and rubbish gauntlet tickets…

Another MASSIVE FAIL by Anet…

I got about 4 gold, not selling rare/t6 (which where aplenty) a couple hours ago. So yes you can get a gold per hour. Now it doesn’t mean everyone will get it. RNG…
And if there was any fail by ANet, it would have been letting all those champ centaurs roam free and break the economy. The fix they did was the right thing, not a fail.