Guild Wars 2

Ugh…. You know, I’m really starting to like this class a lot. But I can’t stand how slow it is out of combat. It’s making the leveling process really NOT fun.

Thanks. Sanctum of Rall actually. TC is our enemy right now in WvW.

I was good up until the very last piece, but some random person helped me out on my lowbie and I got it. All my other toons will have to wait til next year. Too much work for them at their level.

If I still have candy corn and the meter, will I still be able to finish the event and get the Book even after the halloween event is done?

I know the lore seems to hint that I wont, since the spirits are only able to come around every Halloween, but it would be nice to be able to get that book for a back piece on some of my toons that aren’t quite high enough level to finish yet.

ShadowPuppet.3746:

Once you can get clone on dodge it doesn’t matter if they die quick, because you pop more out every single dodge. I would use mirror images then ileap blurred frenzy and shatter, then summon iwarden/izerker dodge roll let them get their first attack off then cry of frustration. If anything is left standing after that just iwave to push the mobs away mirror blade then mind stab this whole string of combo can be done very quickly. Using this method though most mobs will come after you since you are in range to start, giving your clones time to not die unless it is through heavy aoe. You will get vigor on crit through traits and then I reccommend using a energy sigil on weapon swap you can pretty much dodge roll infinitely every 1-2 seconds.

Good info. Like I thought, the class starts out really weak, and just keeps getting stronger. Other classes don’t really feel like they have such a steep power curve, and level out much sooner.

I have to change my stance. At first I thought it was micro-management hell, but really it’s not that bad once you get used to it. You don’t really need to keep track of illusions like I originally thought, since they’re more fire and forget. The only thing I need to watch is how many I have out at a time for shattering.

I switched to GS+Staff at around level 20, and upgraded all my gear. I don’t know if that did the trick, or if it was the gear or the trait points, but my mesmer is really starting to lay the smack down on mobs.

Level 30 now and PVE is getting a lot easier. Normal enemies die really fast except for things like ogres and ettins with huge health pools. Veterans tend to go down pretty fast as well, as long as I can keep enough phantasms out to help with damage.

But that leads me back to one of my original issues with the class: illusions being killed too easily. Any time there is more than one enemy, my illusions almost don’t even get to attack before they’re killed, and sometimes before I can shatter them. Phantasms and clones both. They even die even when enemies aren’t actively trying to kill them because they’re caught by incidental splash damage. To translate that into another class, it’s like half my attacks are missing or being being blocked.

This makes the class feel GREAT at 1v1 situations, but poor in any kind of multi-target or AOE environment. I suppose the traits to cause illusions to inflict conditions when killed is a stopgap for this. But it still rub the wrong way to see a clone or phantasm die the instant it’s summoned.

Hydrodioxide.1705:

Get/take the trait in one of the trees that gives you swifteness every time you heal.

I’m looking at the traits for mesmers right now, and I’m not seeing anything that does swiftness when you heal….

Am I just missing it somehow? Or is it an ability you get from runes?

EDIT: Found it. A superior rune of the centaur 6 piece bonus isn’t terribly useful while still in the leveling up process. Your gear changes too often, and not having access to it until level 60 is pretty kitten late.

In the meantime I suppose you could go 2 runes each of Air/speed/pack. 30% swiftness duration from level 1. Then to 45% at level 39. Assuming they actually stack that way.

Seems a little silly to have to jury-rig out of combat movement like this. Is there a food buff other than candy corn you can make? Or an artificer potion maybe?

Another thing it could have been was a REALLY laggy mesmer with swiftness going.

Ok, been awhile since I updated. Haven’t played as much mesmer as I’d like. It’s a frustratingly slow class at low levels, ankittenep finding exCuses to play something else. But I’m back at it again.

The movement speed out of combat is really bothering me. I’m used to thief and warrior who more or less have perma swiftness. Engineer also, and ranger pretty kitten close. Hell, even necros get speed increases through dagger use and a couple of weapon skills.

Killing still seems extremely slow. I watch pretty much every other class down stuff in about half the time it takes me, but maybe my gear is crap. I’ve also heard that mesmer more or less sucks kitten until around level 40, so I’m gonna keep at it.

On a side note, I completed the Mad King’s Clocktower, so at least I have some nice boots waiting for me at 80.

The questiong I would make is if any other class is doing any better in those huge zerg situations with 50 people? It’s nice to say that mesmers aren’t doing well, but is anyone doing well with that man people spamming AOE?

Ernest.8109:

Some mix of armor

That is the best shot of an engineer I’ve ever seen. Awesome! +1

Well, this has gone a bit off topic. All I really wanted to do was express my gratitude to mesmers for allowing me to avoid the annoyance of repeating that extra-long jump puzzle under fire from enemies. Didn’t mean to start a discussion on jump puzzles in general. Good stuff, though!

Uhg…so in order to break a single immob I have to pop 2 cooldowns and be without a signet? Great design there…..

Still, I suppose it’s better than nothing.

Well, played a few more games as ranger. Nothing but immob after immob. It’s like every person I play knows exactly what the ranger achilles heel is and ruthlessly exploits it.

Makes me ill, almost. I’ve never played a class that has a condition like this that just outright CAN’T be removed. So frustrating.

And yes, 2v1 situations are often winnable. Or at the very least you can hold out long enough for support, or to give your team an advatage. If 2 people are attacking you, that’s 1 person not fighting your team somewhere else. Any class that builds defensively can make a VERY good fight out of a 2v1 situation, especially if they’re playing well.

However, the ranger just gets immobilized and spanked with no real option to counter. The BEST you can hope for is to spam evades. And evades don’t kill the enemy. I hate to admit it, because I like to think that playing better is always the solution, but in this case it really does feel like it’s the class that’s the problem.

Here’s hoping the ranger update has some fixes for issues like this.

The lack of weapon stats AND sigils on kit weapons is a tremendous weakness of the engineer class. It actually punishes you for using a weapon kit. That makes no sense.

Seems like there’s a lot of work left to do for many classes in this game.

I tend to use Healing Spring in sPVP simply because the benefit is greater if there’s even one teammate nearby.

I don’t see anything wrong with just changing sword 2 to a kind of leap+evade like a few other attacks in the game do. In situations where positioning is important, it’s kind of awkward, and potentially dangerous, do be leaping backwards just so you can leap forwards to a target again. I’d much rather have something a little more reliable.

I’ve been playing ranger for a little while now. So far I think I’ve lost maybe one or two sPVP games out of all the matches I’ve played as a ranger. I think I’m just really lucky in that regard, however I do seem to to often get a pretty high score.

The most annoying thing that I’ve run into time and time again is being immobilized. Every time I get immobilized I usually die extremely fast. The only reliable way I’ve been able to deal with it seems to be to do a weapon swap to Sword/Dagger and spam evades one after another, and hope it wears off in time to escape.

However, there doesn’t seem to be ANY way for rangers to remove immobilization outside of a lucky tick of either Signet of Renewal or the trait that makes your pet take conditions.

Rampage as One grants stability, which doesn’t seem to effect immobilization for some reason. Lightning Reflexes breaks stun, but doesn’t get you out of immobilization(it at least does evade though). I don’t know if either of those examples is just a bug, or what. But it’s been my experience that neither is reliable.

So, rangers. I’m asking you: How do you personally deal with immobilization in PVP? Or is it just a death sentence?

Oh, I like the added challenge of some of the jump puzzles. I had a lot of fun completing the one in the Sylvari area with the platforms that disappear mega-man style. I also though the one in the Asura starting zone was interesting as well.

But yeah, the gusts of wind can be a real pain if your connection is bad or you get a lag spike. At least it’s not a major part of the game. You don’t HAVE to do any of it, even the story missions(although the story is kind of nice).

I think if I saw enemies set up siege weapons in the jump puzzle in the eternal battlegrounds that I’d just skip it for the day. Not worth the frustration.

I have just completed the jump puzzle in the Eternal Battlegrounds without the aid of a mesmer portal for the first time. Let me just say that I will NEVER fail to tip a mesmer from now on. You guys should get karma or something for every person that you help avoid that annoying cesspool of Super Mario retardedness.

I bow before your generosity, Mesmers!

Sleepy.2647:

I don’t call bad players to anyone that disagree with me,

O rly? What do you call these quotes of yours then?

I don’t agree with everyone that says ranger is the worst class for PvP or that they are useless Most people who say that just play it wrong, or don’t know how to take advantage of Ranger strengths.

No one said ranger is fine, it needs tweaking but all the ones who say it’s the worst for PvE and PvP simply need to play better their ranger, period.

I bet you won’t see a decent ranger complaining that they are crap for PvP and PvE, most of the ones who QQ like that are the ones who fail at using one properly.

The thing is, there ARE some very good ranger players out there who are doing the math and the testing and the number crunching. They’ve provided solid data that rangers actually are simply not as good when compared to other classes. Not just in PvP, but in PVE as well. Even the devs agree.

You just agreed with me that ranger PvP can hold its own, it just lacks variety of builds and more oriented sPvP/tPvP traits/mechanism.

What I said is that anyone can have moderate success with the ranger. But the ranger being moderately good isn’t going to cut it when you have to be very good at a specialized role to remain competitive in the upper brackets of tournaments and other highly coordinated play.

I don’t know how many different ways I can say it to try and get through to you. I’m glad you’re enjoying ranger, I’m loving mine! But personal enjoyment doesn’t magically make the class into something it isn’t. No matter how much you enjoy driving your ferrari, it doesn’t mean it can compete in an F1 race!

As i said plenty of times, to me PvP is not sPvP nor tPvP, sure it’s a form of PvP. The only PvP this game has is not sPvP, and that’s where some people fail to understand, some people will like WvW and others will like sPvP more, both have PvP aspect but WvW can offer you “World PvP” feeling, not just zergs.

Your own narrow definition of what PvP is continues to baffle and astound me. GW2 offers many different types of PVP: World vs World, Structured PVP, and Tournament PVP. Most classes are very good at all of these. Ranger is simply not as good at sPvP and tPVP. Why? Why shouldn’t Ranger be just as good at all aspects of the game as every other class? Why is ranger the only class that doesn’t have a specific role to fill in sPVP and tPVP, and is left with some kind of weak jack-of-all-trades nonsense?

Anyone, especially highly skilled players, can make ranger work at the low end. But you don’t balance around the low end. You balance around the specialized and optimized roles that are squeezing every ounce of advantage they can get out of a class. And in that environment the ranger class does not match up against ANY other class for ANY of the specialized roles that high-level teamwork play require.

I’m sorry if you don’t understand the dynamics of the high-end team play that goes into coordinated sPVP and tPVP. I’m sorry that your view of PvP only includes the ability of a class to kill people. But there is a whole world of depth to teamwork and PvP beyond that. I’m done trying to educate you. I’m just glad the devs recognized the problem and are taking steps to remedy it.

All I know is that for those of us who have been struggling with the current state of ranger and making it work anyway; it’s going to be like high-altitude training. We’ll be so used to getting results despite the flaws with the class, that any buff is going to make us feel REALLY strong.

I just hope the reaction from the rest of the playerbase isn’t too negative. People get used to looking down on weaker classes and expecting it to be an easy fight. If suddenly they start getting beat by rangers a LOT, it’s going to spark some QQ. We’ll have to wait and see I guess.

It’s really easy to identify which are real players and which are bots. The bots always move in a line with each one following the person in front. They often path in a very small area as well. I’ve seen all rangers with bears, and I’ve also seen more recently groups of different classes.

I report every single one. Not sure what effect it’s actually having, though.

Dante Dragonhand.2538:

@Eliteseraph

Wow also didnt have nearly the amount of features gw2 has on release, so they had an easier time fixing. Calm your kitten gw2 is 2 months old, its still early.

Oh, I’m not angry. I’m glad Anet is staying on top of things, and at least taking the time to officially acknowledge that there are issues. Communication with the players is key to a successful game, imho.

All I’m really saying is that if Anet drops the ball on ranger issues, it’s gonna kitten off a lot of ranger players. That shouldn’t really be very surprising.

Sleepy, sPVP actually IS a form of ‘real’ PVP. WvW is not the only aspect of the game. Killing power isn’t the only measure of PvP. And for the record, I generally win 7 out of 10 games on my ranger. I think i actually win more games on my ranger than I do on my thief, maybe I’m just lucky that way with random teams.

And no one besides bad players is saying that the ranger class is “Crap”. They’re only saying that whatever role a ranger tries to fill in highly organized play is done better by another class. There is a world of difference between random games and the finely tuned, highly coordinated play of tPVP.

Anyone can take any class an have moderate success in most aspects of GW2 PvP. But once you start getting into the upper levels of play is when the flaws and faults of a class start to show.

All classes can super specialize into a specific role and be part of a team effort in order to maximize their effectiveness. The team becomes greater than the sum of individuals due to teamwork and proper use of these specialized roles. The problem with the ranger class is that whatever role it can try to specialize into is simply done better by another class.

Whether you like sPVP or not, that is a very important aspect of PVP. I’m sorry that you don’t believe that sPVP flaws with the class mean anything, but many players do engage in sPVP every day. Every other class has been built to be a very effective part of sPVP. Why is ranger being ignored in this aspect? Why are the players who play as a ranger being ignored on this issue?

It’s clear that you don’t like and disregard sPVP, but many other people like and enjoy it. All they’re asking for is that their class have the same option to specialize into an effective role for it. It doesn’t make them bad players simply because they disagree with you.

I have been playing videogames for 20 years(pinball, pacman in the arcade, battle zone, galaga, etc), and I main a thief.

Whenever I’m playing one of my alts(warrior, ranger, necro), I tend to own thieves because I know how they work and what they’re likely to try doing. I love dodging or blocking out of their uber combo. Stun breakers wreck a lot of their strategy as well.

Thieves are not OP, class and game knowledge is. L2P is the only real answer in this case. If I can beat a thief on a RANGER (thought to be the weakest class in sPVP) you know it can’t be OP.

Zunhar.4079:

C&D is commonly joked about having to be in kissing range to land, and it’s been that way for quite some time. Maybe the fact that you took a break from Thief made you forget how close you had to be to land C&D?

Maybe, but I don’t think that’s the case. I play an asura, so my melee ranges have always been a little bit off, so I got really used to exactly how close I needed to be for C&D to work. I could tag someone with C&D without the target ring actually touching my character. Now I have to literally be standing directly on top of my target for it to work. That’s a pretty big difference.

When you go into stealth and it looks like it didn’t work, look at your 1 skill to see if it changed to the stealth skill. Other people see that we have gone into stealth, but it doesn’t show up on our screen (kinda like the opposite of the rendering issue).

Ah, maybe that’s it. I hadn’t considered that I might have gone into stealth without the game actually displaying it. Do other players view me as being in stealth, or can they keep targeting me when it does this?

Most people who say that just play it wrong, or don’t know how to take advantage of Ranger strengths….
…Hell, i love my ranger for WvW, i go solo sometimes and kill nearly every class with ease,…

…For sPvP i can’t really tell because i don’t play it that often, i don’t like sPvP.

That’s great. One more person who thinks killing under-geared people in WvW makes their class good. No offense, but EVERY class can do what you described in WvW. WvW is not a terribly good example of class balance. Even Anet says WvW is intentionally unbalanced. PLEASE stop using WvW as proof that ranger is fine as a class.

No offense, but sPvP is not the perfect balance testing place, it rarely involves 1v1 where as in WvW you will find a lot of 1v1 situations…geez, i hate people that probably only plays sPvP and think they know everything about PvP.
sPvP it’s just a lame battleground where you mostly see a couple proffessions/builds being played the most because that benefits more the team, that’s not really PvP, it’s about team composition and builds, X build beats Y build at holding/capturing points.

The reason sPVP and tPVP are quoted and used so much for class balance examples is because everyone is forced into an equal situation. Everyone has max skills, max traits, and the same gear.

So yes, it actually IS the perfect ‘balance testing place’. Separate your dislike for sPVP from your logic. You claim that capturing and holding points isn’t PVP, but what exactly are you doing in WvW? Oh….zerging against a door and then capturing and holding a point. How is this different from sPVP besides the scale of the fight?

Once again I feel I need to point out that while WvW is also PvP, it is far from balanced. How often can you guarantee your 1v1 matchup in WvW is against someone who it using the exact same level of gear as you? You can’t. That is why sPVP is a better example of class balance.

I’ve done 1v5 on my thief in WvW because they weren’t level 80(you can tell by the arrow up next to their name). Does that mean I can do the same thing when everything is set to equal in sPVP? No, of course not. There is no class or build that can take 5 people in sPVP. Do you know why? Because everything except class and personal skill is forced into equality.

WvW is fun. I love it! But it is about the worst example you could use to support a claim that a class is balanced.

However, a ranger who understands its weaknesses and strengths can face an enemy and surely win. Personally I have managed to defeat enemies in 1vs1 with relative ease, take on 2 players and come out victorious (which by the way can be amazingly difficult as a ranger) only because I knew how to take advantage of the fight.

Another fine example of an amazing player making the most of an underpowered class. Imagine, Awge, what you could do to people on a thief, or a mesmer? You would absolutely dominate.
——-
Once again, PLEASE: if you are claiming that ranger is fine or good in sPVP/tPVP then back up your statement with build, gear, and a short description of your playstyle and tactics. Include DETAILS and not just “I can win with ease.” That doesn’t tell us anything at all, and you come off as just making things up.

And how often does that all go exactly as planned, Nels? You never fight anyone who dodges? What about classes that turn your boons into afflictions? People you fight don’t use stun breakers? Blocks? Invulnerability?

It sounds nice on paper, but no strat like that works every time. Lets see some video footage of you pulling this off regularly in sPVP or tPVP. Uncut footage, not some highlight reel.

Nels the Cornwhisperer.8025:

In PvP, I win, and score highest or second highest most of the time.

If anyone thinks rangers are bad, they’re just not good at it, and should probably find a profession/build more suited to their playstyle.

Would you care to elaborate some details on how you’re accomplishing these amazing feats that hardly anyone else is able to recreate? Let’s see some builds: gear, traits, pets. Better, a video of you dominating.

When you say “PvP” do you mean owning under-geared people in WvW, or tPVP against organized groups, or sPVP randoms?

Anyone can say that ranger is good. Here, watch: “I play a ranger and I own people left and right. You guys are all just bad.”

See that? Does it make it true? No. The problems with the ranger class are well documented, and don’t need any more proving. You and people like you are claiming something completely opposite from the documented issues. The burden of proof lies with you, not with the people referencing the factual information.

Back up your statement with something. Anything. Because if everyone is saying rangers are bad except a very few people, then those very few people need to release their secret ninja training techniques to the rest of us so we can go back to playing the class to it’s fullest. Otherwise you’re just going to get dismissed as one more person who thinks that slapping down low level people in WvW while wearing full exotics makes their class good.

I’ve been mulling this over for the last couple of weeks, because it’s been bothering me how bored I’ve gotten of WvW. When I first started, I was very excited about the open world combat and the freeform style of it. I like evenly matched structured PvP as well, but there’s something to be said for the raw chaotic style of WvW.

But lately WvW has become kind of stale. There’s really only a few things you can do. You can run around and gank individual stragglers or people trying to finish explorers or running supply. You can join a zerg and go do the Player vs Door thing. Or you can defend.

Some of this is fun for awhile, but eventually it just becomes rinse and repeat. You’re attacking and capturing towers/castles/keeps so your realm gets more points. Getting you more points gets your realm…..bonuses, which are then used to help you better….well, capture points. It’s circular. But even completely dominating the other two servers and holding all the points on all the maps doesn’t really mean anything other than your server moving up a rank or two. So what does getting your server up in the ranking do? Nothing, other than bragging rights maybe.

There definitely feels like something is missing from WvW. sPvP at least has personal ranks, and there’s a sense of progression. WvW lacks that. All you’re getting is karma and exp and maybe some gold.

I don’t know if I’m articulating it well enough. Maybe I’m just bored with WvW. Does anyone else feel like some kind of progression is missing from WvW?

I had a match earlier last week that had no less than EIGHT necromancers. There were also 3 mesmers. I was on my thief.

Let me tell you, I’ve never seen so many grey health bars or conditions in my entire sPVP career. It was ridiculous.

I took a break from my thief for awhile in order to learn some other classes and how they work: necro, mesmer, warrior, elem. But on returning to playing my thief again, I’ve noticed that some of my abilities don’t perform the same way anymore.

Cloak and Dagger: It feels like they nerfed the range on it. Previously I had the range in which I needed to be to hit with it down to second nature. Now it seems like I have to be virtually standing right on top of someone in order for it to connect. And even when it does, I’ve never seen so many instances of “immune” before in my life, especially right after someone is downed. Why do players even get a short immunity to anything upon being downed is a mystery to me. And no, it wasn’t the revealed debuff.

Stealth in general often times just doesn’t seem to work. I’m not talking about channeled attacks continuing to hit once they’ve started(that’s it’s own level of stupid). I mean when I activate Hide in Shadows or C&D and nothing happens. Stealth doesn’t activate, no error or immune messages. Just nothing happens. And I made SURE that the revealed debuff was not on.

Mostly it just feels like a few of the core ways in which thief works don’t perform the way they used to. Has anyone else experienced anything similar to this, or am I just seeing things?

1) STOP free server transfers

It was free transfers that allowed me to find a server that fit my playstyle and schedule. While I agree that it’s being abused, it also has a beneficial effect for many players.

2) Numbers Balancing

I’m assuming this is in regards to population. Hard caps or controls on population is a bad idea. Some would say the entire point of the game is getting into WvW and brawling freeform. Telling people they can’t play the game because other people aren’t playing the game is counter-productive.

Better to inact some kind of power-balancing buff, although even that is sketchy. Server matchups seem to be having the desired effect, anyway.

3) Class Balancing i.e nerf mes portals and thieves invis <main two requested

People lose to a class then ask for it to be nerfed. It isn’t the class that’s strong, it’s the person playing it. Or rather, it’s the person who’s losing being so weak and bad that they want artificial advantages handed to them until they can feel like they’re winning. This isn’t balance, it’s selfish greed and lack of effort.

4) Swap orb and out manned buffs or adjust them

The orbs need to be valuable, otherwise what’s the point in fighting over them. However, I do admit that in their current state it only promotes a snowball effect where a side that’s already winning is more likely to continue doing so. But in some cases orbs change hands many times over the course of the week. See #2: server matchups seem to be working in this regard.

5) Make defending keeps and towers more worth doing with rewards or something.
5* give the person that made any upgrade to the hold some credit any time it is successfully guarded and extra if they helped defend it. Give loot to those who placed siege when their siege weapon has killed a player. < two good ideas.

WvW is the effort of the entire server, not just individuals. What about the people running supply? They get nothing? The people defending supply camps and yaks? Repairing walls and gates? Manning the walls and repelling defenders? Scouting and providing intel?

If you want a more personal touch, there is always sPVP. There’s already a deficiency in this regard, and increasing special rewards only for certain actions is only going to cause even more people to ignore teamwork in favor of selfishly seeking rewards. It’s already hard enough to get people to do supply runs.

6) Implement Team Voice chat in game.

Yes. kitten this should have been in the game since launch.

7) Make Defenses cheaper or offensive siege more expensive.

This just makes it harder to attack and easier to defend. What’s the justification for that?

10) Implement Friend Foe feature so you can ally with other servers.

The entire point of WvWvW is that it’s a three way battle. This sort of change would just allow two servers to completely shut out a third for a week and goes against the nature and dynamic of the game. A horrible idea, imho.

11) wvw karma armor stats, Give us more choices on what stats we want not just toughness vit.

I agree. More sidegrade and customization choices for players is almost always a good idea.

12) walls and doors can only be taken out by siege equipment

This is just another aspect of #7.

14) Add supply depot in spawn points.

This seems like a bad idea because control of supply and supply camps is a vital part of the WvW dynamic. There are a number of problems with having supply for free at your starting point.

Just handing it out for free every time you respawn takes away from the value of controlling supply camps and attacking/defending yaks.

People attacking out of their spawn could just load up on trebs from their immunity zone to make controlling the nearest towers/camps too easy.

Supply runs near the starting area would be quick one way trips. Tele to the start, grab supply, run back or tele back to the nearest spawn to your destination.

15) Workers Repair Walls.

This is 7 again.

Popularity and repetition of requests is not the same thing as balanced and healthy changes for the game.

Some of these are good suggestions, others are not.

Well, all I know so far is that I definitely don’t feel OP or super strong. At the low levels I feel just like any other class. Maybe this changes at 80, but I’m not seeing the nature of the complaints so far; with the caveat that my opinion is highly subject to my limited experience with the class so far.

I’ll keep using this thread to update you guys as I level. Assuming I don’t get completely frustrated with the class and give it up, it should provide a good log for any other people taking a look at maybe trying mesmer.

Level 14 at the time of this post. Been using Staff and GS. I did try sword/pistol earlier and liked it. Honestly I’m leaning towards switching to GS with a swap to S/P for levelling. I’m still not really liking illusions much. They just die too quickly, and that REALLY makes me want either the traits to improve their HP, or the trait that does bad stuff to enemies when they die.

First off, excellent name, Nixon. Second, I had thought about doing something similar after poring over the traits and skills and weapon abilities. Have you considered throwing in some runes to increase swiftness duration(Rune of the Centaur?) as well, or is that just not worth it?

…You’re fighting a single regular mob, you use your clone summoning ability, phantasm, let the phantasm get 1 volley off, then shatter and the mob is dead.

Interesting. It must work a little different at slightly higher levels with decent gear and traits to back it up. In the 1-15 rage where I still don’t even have a helmet or. Shoulders or jewelry, clones get 1-shot and phantasms 2. And that’s against non-veteran enemies of even level.

Ill have to give mesmer more time then. The suggestion to treat illusions like just another attack instead of short-term pets was great, and has already changed the way I approach playing it.

don’t forget to shatter when they reach under 10% of their health.

I found this interesting, because it seems like most times illusions are being one shot. It makes me feel like the trait to increase illusion HP will be a must take.

Couple of issues here, besides actual build advice which I’m not qualified to give about mesmers:

i said that mesmers are awesome 1vs1
i got really mad

Mental state when fighting thieves(or any good player, for that matter) is incredibly important. If you go into a duel with a thief, you need to be calm and on top of your game. Thieves are designed to be best at 1v1 matchups, and you’re not going to win if you’re already flustered or overconfident.

Build and gear are only part of the equation. Mental state is another.

Hmm….thanks for the info guys. I suspect that mesmer is a class that I’ll never master, but I’m getting some really good insight into how it all works together. The guys I see in PvP must be really good, or at least have a firm liking for micro-management of their illusions.

I’ve mainly been spending my time playing Thief and Warrior, with a small break for necro. But I really want to try understanding every class, and lately mesmers have been giving me a really hard time in PvP. I know, I know. A thief asking for help on a mesmer. Well, sorry, I don’t play the fotm glass cannon builds like 99% of people, and mesmers give me a lot of trouble.

Anyway, I’ve watched MrPrometheus’ mesmer videos, and I’ve been playing one for a few levels now, and it still just strikes me as a ridiculously unnecessarily complex class that does most of it’s damage far too indirectly. Maybe I’m still “doing it wrong”, but that’s why I’m here.

So: is there a simple and easy to use build for mesmers while a person is still learning the class, or is it micro-manage hell for the entire life of the mesmer? It just seems like phantasms and clones die REALLY fast. I know they aren’t pets like a necro or ranger, but kitten One shot most times. Maybe this changes at higher levels with better gear and traits?

The other thing that bothers me a LOT is how illusions disappear after a target dies. They don’t hang around for the duration of combat, but only until the target you sick them on expires. It makes sense that they disappear after combat ends, but wiping after a single target just feels really counter intuitive.

Yet another thing which troubles me about the mesmer is the lack of any kind of reliable movement enhancement. There’s a trait that increases speed during combat, which is great for combat! But no over-land movement besides a short duration swiftness increase through the scepter. This has GOT to suck in WvW when you need to get from point A to point B quickly, and downright mind-numbing for PVE stuff like map completion.

I really want to like this class, because on paper(and from what I’ve seen mesmers do) it looks like a VERY strong class. And please please PLEASE don’t take this post as me trashing on mesmers or criticizing the class. I am in no position to do either. These are just my initial impressions after 10 levels of PVE and several hours of research; and they could very well be way off base. I’m making this thread because I want to understand the class, not bash it.

So, experienced mesmers: where do I go from here? Just stick it out and level to 80 before the class really comes into it’s own? Or is there some secret that I’m missing?

And still doing kitten amount of damage. What a surprise!

For the record, I play a lvl 80 P/D thief. I still see plenty of other thieves tearing it up with Pistol Whip + Haste. Can we stop with the crying now?

SoR is never going to be competitive in the current system. Look at the guilds on SoR – all of the larger guilds are US guilds. Compare to a server like Henge where you have several large Oceanic guilds.

Yeah, SoR doesn’t have fully capped out night populations with hour long queues to get into every single WvW map, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t competitive.

As a player who mostly puts in time after midnight PST, I can tell you that SoR has a decent population of off-hours players. NSP outnumbers us, sure ( kitten you zergs!), but we often are very well organized and either push them back or hold our ground every night.

I tried transferring around a bunch of different servers in the first week of week-long matches, trying to find a good late night server to fight for. So far I’m having a hell of a lot more ‘fun’ over the last two matchups being on SoR than I ever did on a ‘competitive’ server where I had to wait for hours just to get in and fight massive zergs everywhere.

And the matchups are far far more even here as well. I NEVER feel like I’m going to be ‘roflstomped’ on SoR, even at the strangest hours of night. I don’t think people will transfer as much as you believe, especially not if servers like SoR, DH, NSP, Yaks, and others continue to have such close and enjoyable matches.

We may not end up being top 3 servers, but why does that even matter? It’s not like you’re winning anything for that. I’d much rather have good enjoyable matches where there’s tons of respect, than the uber-competitive zergfests that happen in the top servers.

Mattress.3629:

Got to love attacking a keep with an army of pet’s seeing as that’s the only thing that would load for me for over an hour.

I absolutely HATE the fact that often times all I’ll see are friendly pets. I don’t give two kitten about friendly pets! Why is my client wasting resources drawing them instead of the enemy?

Also, amusing the name of the cat in your picture. Is it REALLY there, or did the culling error just think it was there?

One: because it’s bullkitten to be running supply and get killed before the enemy zerg even draws on your screen.

Two: because of the way stealth and culling interact, I know I’m getting away with stuff I shouldn’t be able to.

WvW has the potential to be so much fun. But it gets killed by these problems. It actually almost becomes anti-fun.

Anet, I really hope you’re working day and night on this. Many good players like myself are getting incredibly frustrated with the state of WvW. Personally I’m just sick of dealing with it, and I’m not even on a super high-pop WvW match.

phaeris.7604:

Don’t be the rifle/longbow spammer pewpew guy.

You’re a warrior, melee weapons or go home.

Me and two friends rolled into WvW last night, our side were at a standoff with a slightly larger zerg, just trading pewpews. So f-this I thought!, told my buds in vent to follow me up, knocked fear/stomp/endure pain into utilities and sword leapt into the middle of their masses hitting fear+endure pain, then a stomp for good measure then activating shield block (traited with reflect) and then I greatsworded 3 , sword 2 then GS 5 out of the mass.

By this time our side took the oppotunity and swept in culling the enemy. That is the beauty of the warrior. By the way, i’m level 58 in blue/greens (spend way too much time in spvp).

It’s do or die. This is why I abhor rifle warriors.

Not having a ranged option is perfectly fine if all you want to do is assault camps and fight random zerg vs zerg. But for any kind of siege combat you’re going to want to have either a rifle or a longbow for your weapon swap.

It’s either that or bring a ram/catapult/treb/cart to the party every time and hope people have supply.

Devildoc.6721:

Doesn’t help one lick in PVE, condition damage is awful in PVE because only the person with the highest condition damage will get credit.

To clarify, that’s a problem with multiple people using the same types of condition damage, not necessarily condition damage on it’s own. In which case that’s not something that’s specific to thieves.

Unless you’re talking about tagging trash mobs during events? Then I’d agree that condition damage is somewhat lacking since the enemies die so quickly, and tagging them with direct burst damage is important.

But the thief class using burst damage is far from castrated by this change. Even Pistol Whip itself is still rather good. The base damage of the ability was nerfed by 15%, which doesn’t take into account all the other ways to improve it. This is what people don’t seem to understand. Total damage output isn’t dropping by 15%, even if all you use is Pistol Whip(which you shouldn’t be unless you’re terrible, in which case it doesn’t matter anyway).

You still have all your other damage modifiers coming into play: Gear, Traits, Runes. To claim that it’s the end of the world for Thieves, and that no one will ever invite a thief to a dungeon run is just being overly pessimistic and defeatist. The sky is not falling, and there is more to being a part of a successful dungeon run that raw burst damage output.

The only things the nerfs the OP lised will do is cause thieves to re-adjust their builds away from all out 100% offense builds. They’ll actually need to think beyond a simple strategy of “pop all CDs, explode enemy, stealth, lol!”.

I don’t necessarily think this is a bad thing. Many of the good thief videos you see already involve the players thinking outside of the burst builds. They’re taking people down with superior tactics and awareness, and outplaying their opponents instead of insta-gibbing them.

The burst builds are FUN, don’t get me wrong. But they aren’t very balanced when you get right down to it. Also, nerfs in one area might allow for adjustments upwards in other areas. Anet might see fit to give thieves a more reliable long range option other than the shortbow with cluster bomb spam.

We’ll see. In the mean time, all you burst backstab thieves should maybe take this opportunity to try out a more survivable condition build, such as the P/D, or the D/D bleed builds. Broaden your skillset. That way nerfs to one ability don’t wreck your entire effectiveness.

I haven’t tested it extensively so I can’t give you exact numbers, but it’s not a lot. Something around a 1-200HP a pop, IIRC. The key use of it is that you’re critting so much that it adds to your passive survivability, and since it’s life STEAL you’re also doing a bit more damage as well.

It really depends on how you like to play. Do you want all out offense? Then use lightning. If you find that you’re often low on HP all the time, then I’d suggest blood.

If you wanna watch pvp videos with minimal/no editing Eliteseraph you should watch the videos on my channel. all my videos are unedited start to finish pvp matches. Some are tourny matches others spvp ones and its all recorded with in game sound, no cheesy background music, tourny matches contain our mumble comms as well.

It was more of a statement about people posting crap vids of them blowing up randoms or ganking in WvW. Anyone with any class can do that and make a cut of all the times they succeeded.

It’s just refreshing to see REAL play.

do you really not understand? your Team is fighting PUG Teams.

Who they’re up against doesn’t detract from the skills shown in the video. Coordination certainly helps the non-PUG team win the match, but several of those games shown in the video had pretty close scores. Generally speaking, even some PUGs have exceptional skills and can coordinate well on the fly. Simply having voice chat and a premade group does not guarantee victory, nor does being in a PUG automatically make you a worse player.