ok i feel like this whole nerf this nerf that thing is going too far. why do u guys only want anet to nerf EVERY viable build and skill. how about we buff other classes instead of nerfing? the whole confusion nerf destroyed a ton of mesmer builds, now everyone has to regear and go to power builds. what if anet would have buffed the cleansing tools or would have added a condition removal for certain sigils or signets?
yes, thieves can get annoying and a pain to fight, but i do not agree on nerfing them as we already know they will get a massive hit with those new traps.
anet could add also a few new effects, that maybe reflect a critical hit once or something. nerfing everything will only lead to classes becoming boring and builds will become not viable anymore which i think is horrible.
Amen to that. As a Mesmer, my sympathy goes out to thieves. Course they never had a core class condition cut by 50%. If Anet’s not careful they’ll lose players to all these senseless class nerfs. Make buffs, not Nerf.
RIP confusion. I miss it so.
It’s not just T1 that has seen the meta change. I play on a T8 server, we don’t have large numbers to play with. It’s basically become a “Hey they are attacking ET, lets try and take a fortified tower while they are gone.” Then as our massive 20 man zerg PvD’s while we frantically lookout for people trying to get in, cries of “Don’t let anyone in!” echo out of our TS.
The gate is down to 30%
One guy gets through, grabs an AC. “Ok lets leave and grab a camp.”
Yay… fun.
Imagine doing something crazy, something really outside the box, like, oh… I don’t know… maybe destroying the siege inside before you knock on the door? An AC or two of your own, maybe a trebuchet even can do wonders with regards to clearing the way.
Read the rest of the posts before you comment. We’ve already stated that building trebs and guarding siege for a chunk of time may work but it’s boring and tedious for smaller tower grabs, not to mention expensive. Especially since most PUG players dont carry a lot of siege prints. If Anet wanted to make WvW more casual and easy for new players to jump in, requiring everyone to carry tons of siege to be effective is not the way to go. Most new players don’t even know where to purchase siege. For SM we expect a treb situation. But for towers it’s not a fun playstyle and decreases emphasis on player verses player. What I don’t understand is why this AC fix is not top on their list of priorities.
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Pale green FTW.
I just can’t believe you people can’t cope with the arrow carts and haven’t figured out other tactics.
Structures are still getting flipped on a regular basis, just not a quickly nor able to just have a ninja team do it.
So many bads.
It has nothing to do with bad play. Of course arrow carts can be countered and new tactics employed. But as I’ve stated before, what the majority of people in this thread object to is that those new tactics are simply not fun and wind up being tedious and boring. That, combined with the fact that what was intended as a Zerg breaker for low pop servers is actually being used by high pop servers to solidify their lead in annoying and overpowered ways. The irony here is that confusion, the true Zerg breaker, was destroyed on the 30th as well. Most WvW players want epic player to player combat over objectives. Not standing around protecting arrow carts and trebs. Most WvW player want to be able to storm a tower when a wall falls, not be unable to enter the hole (and not even bother trying). Pre-patch siege was a nice compliment to player strategy and combat. Now siege is the main show. The main weapon. It’s absurd that an arrow cart is more powerful than a catapult or a balista. Simply absurd.
All I’ve seen in kitten and moaning about how this is destryoing wvw because they can’t deal with it and all these people are having a mass exsodus.
Hasn’t changed anything that I’ve seen, because there are still q’s on several boarderland maps during the week, stuff gets flipped just as easily as before, maybe a little bit slower but it hasn’t actually changed much beyond a little different thought about taking something like using a cat or treb instead of just rolling up to the gate and dropping a bunch of rams and STAND IN THE AC FIRE WHILE BEATING ON THE DOOR.
AOE should make you want to get out of the circle, not ignore it. I’ve stated before, range is a bit much but damage should stay. People should absolutely want to get out of AoE, not ignore it.
Riiight. 48 pages, 2300+ responses, over 30,000 views and it’s just a bunch of L2P noobs who can’t take the heat for you, huh? I don’t care what business you’re running but when that percentage of the consumer base is that riled up about what Anet thought would be a minor patch I’d say something is very, very wrong. Those are serious numbers.
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It’s a bit wonky though. And the range sucks.
I just can’t believe you people can’t cope with the arrow carts and haven’t figured out other tactics.
Structures are still getting flipped on a regular basis, just not a quickly nor able to just have a ninja team do it.
So many bads.
It has nothing to do with bad play. Of course arrow carts can be countered and new tactics employed. But as I’ve stated before, what the majority of people in this thread object to is that those new tactics are simply not fun and wind up being tedious and boring. That, combined with the fact that what was intended as a Zerg breaker for low pop servers is actually being used by high pop servers to solidify their lead in annoying and overpowered ways. The irony here is that confusion, the true Zerg breaker, was destroyed on the 30th as well. Most WvW players want epic player to player combat over objectives. Not standing around protecting arrow carts and trebs. Most WvW player want to be able to storm a tower when a wall falls, not be unable to enter the hole (and not even bother trying). Pre-patch siege was a nice compliment to player strategy and combat. Now siege is the main show. The main weapon. It’s absurd that an arrow cart is more powerful than a catapult or a balista. Simply absurd.
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I was semi-ok with the AC buff……until tonight. I sieged up NE keep on our bl the best i could, only to have everything taken down in seconds by ac’s. And my siege was even placed out of reach – i thought. All that time and money/badges wasted. Safe to say i lost all will to do wvw after that. I’d say it’s time for a damage reduction.
I know. Terrible. There are several ways for them to correct the AC mess. Any of these solutions will work:
1. The AC buff only turns on for outmanned servers. Every other server it’s reverted to pre patch.
2. Damage for AC is reduced by 50%. Range reduced. Damage to siege reduced 80%.
3. AC cost is jacked way up.
4. AC’s only last 10 minutes before they disappear.
I’m still very much enjoying the buff to arrowcarts. Keeps and towers are still being flipped frequently on our tier and the only real difference I’ve noticed is how small groups of players can now effectively defend against a zerg that’s rushing the doors of a keep. Everything else seems to be the same.
I’d be happy if this buff wasn’t reverted really, but if it’s becoming a huge problem on the higher tiers then maybe it needs to be looked into.
If the 80% dam AC buff only turned on when a server was outmanned, then maybe this patch would work. The problem is that on my tier they are mostly utilized by the dominating, high pop server to ensure that a lower pop server has no hope in hell of ever making a come back. My server used to rely on quick bursts of guerrilla warfare and tower ninja-ing in order to compensate for our lower numbers. These tactics are useless now that the top dogs have covered every inch of their territory in AC’s. Taking a tower fast and deadly like has now become a long, tedious, treb-building slog. This time suck allows the higher pop server to hold their points and send in reinforcements at their leisure. Not to mention banish us from doing anything other then flipping camps. So if this patch was intended to give lower pop servers an edge, it failed miserably. Yes, many WvW players are just avoiding the game these days, hoping a patch will come out soon to correct this blunder.
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yeah the confusion nerf was over the top and turned a lot of builds into an nonviable mess…we are trying to adjust, but most mesmers had to switch to an entire new build+gear and a new playstyle that they arent used to, because some weapons are not good enough anymore. I don’t like all the qq’ing everywhere about everything that is strong.
each class has certain builds and skills, that can be extreemly strong in game if in the right hands. so whining over a strong attack and then getting kitten nerfed by that, destroys the fun for everyone sooner or later.
why not buffing other classes before nerfing everything? and btw ANET spvp is not the same as wvw and should be handled separately.
Amen to that. RIP confusion! Why couldn’t they have brought dam down by 10% then given a few classes some anti-confusion buffs. Some boon like “Focused” which ignores confusion damage. Boom. Problem solved, glam Mesmer still viable. Not that there really was a problem with confusion to begin with. Cough L2P Cough.
I don’t see all the doom and gloom people are talking about. WvW still has ques on our server. People are still playing. Our vets are still playing. Not one single person in our guild has quit over this. A lot of people are even enjoying WvW more than they used to. There’s a lot of people that support the AC change. There is no mass exodus from WvW, at least on our server.
Maybe this is because we usually roll in groups of 10ish instead of zergs, but we’re loving WvW as much as ever right now. Yes, arrow carts make things more challenging during a siege. We consider it upping the difficulty and challenge ourselves to find new strategies. Strategies that do exist btw. A keep defended by ACs is not impossible to attack, just harder.
So to the people that are actually leaving the game because they can’t adapt to a minor change like this. Maybe WvW wasn’t intended for you to begin with. Which is not me trying to take a shot at you, just saying maybe you were looking for something else.
Ahhhhh… Yes. So those of us who played WvW religiously since launch were not the intended player base. Gotcha. I’m glad your server is still normal. Mine’s deserted. No one is debating the ability to counter AC’s with new tactics, what we are debating is the FUN of those tactics. Here’s the WvW I remember and miss. Two months ago SF launched a massive attack on our red keep. The call went out for players to defend. SF had about 100 players. We had about 45. Our wall seige was quickly liquified. Through careful use of choke points, landscape, and amazing players we engaged in an epic struggle of nonstop combat ( both large and small scale) through out every nook of the keep that lasted 4 hours straight. Our keep lord died 6 times and we revived him every time. And we (NSP) held the keep. It was beyond amazing. That kind of combat hasn’t happened even remotely since the AC buff. Nor could it. Those fun times are over. Bring em back. Please, Anet. We beg of you.
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It’s incredible how one patch has utterly destroyed what was once an incredibly addictive game. Before patch our server was flooded with players and commanders. You could always log on an find a fight. After patch it’s like a ghost town. I logged on and found myself flipping ogres solo just cuz there was nothing else to do. Haven’t seen a commander in ages. Gradually players trickled in and we got enough to go attack Ogrewatch. Same as before, the other force sauntered in and put a few foes on their AC’s. We retreated to the hill and set up trebs. Then waited and guarded those trebs. Epic stuff sitting around watching a treb work. Enough time elapsed without any major progress that the red team decided to wipe our treb. We defended it for a bit. Then folks just quit. Not worth it to players at this point. The real thing WvW needed to get player base up is a major reward for the winning team. Imagine if there was a set of incredible, unique armor with glow effects that you could only get from WINNING weekly match ups. I’ll take a new currency, sure. People would play then. Instead we get overpowered arrow carts that destroy the karma XP train which was another reason players were drawn to WvW. Thank god I leveled my character in WvW pre-patch. Impossible now. I still hold out hope that Anet will mend the error of their ways and give us back WvW.
I see our numbers drop every day. People are moving away and we have zero queues on any map at any given time.
All that is left to do now is solo roam, since our guild group can’t really accomplish anything. We don’t want our members to spend 3 hours of their time watching others play with siege.
I must admit that I don’t know a whole lot about war history, but I don’t care, this is boring. If realistic means whatver this is, I rather do without. I assume this is the approach Anet wants to take though, since no “fix” has come yet.
GG Anet, it was fun while it lasted.
Agreed.
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@Entropy: Thank you! I originally built a little Mesmer to go WvW’ing with, and 2 days later the nerf bat clobbered the “Glamorous” build. <sad face> Now you come along with a really nice build that makes me want to pick up the class again (lvl 30, WvW mainly w/ a smidge of PvE). I realize I won’t be “strong” until I hit 80, but now I have a new build to shoot for. :-)
So thrilled to hear that! Huzzah! I hope you enjoy the build when you level. May the gods be with you my purple comrade.
The REALLY need to buff iMage. He’s absolutely useless. Or they could de away with him entirely and add a new Phantasm. I purpose Illusionary Conjurer who deals the same damage as a clone, but conjures more clones on hit.
Just tried this build with full runes of Lyssa and Signet of Inspiration. Really great effect and a nice bit of crowd support.
No it is not even great in terms of meta. Guess what the players at the treb get to do? Stand around watching the treb fire.
FIX.
ARROWCARTS.
The thing is ppl where standing at trebs even before the AC update. Its just how you play in larges scale fights when your aiming to take down a wall on a keep or a tower if your teams are evenly matched. If one group is out number or there is no one in the tower or keep you use rams. This is what is also know as PvD. Now that world are getting more on lines with each other same number of players and some what same level of skilled commanders you will find the game falling more into long term attks and you will find that only during the down times that you see ninjas and or rushing doors with rams or golmes.
Now it would be nice if they made it so all weapons of wvw must be made where they can be hit by players and other line of sights weapons such as blista but that more of something that needs to be fixed for all wvw weapons and not just AC.
I don’t want an attack on Ogrewatch to require building trebs and take a ton of time to accomplish. That’s what keeps and SM should be for. Pre-patch there were so many epic keep battles. No one bothers attacking the keeps. I can’t remember the last time SM changed hands. WvW has been reduced by AC’s to a boring slog for mid level towers.
If its fully upgraded and well defending then you will have to. There a lot of points of attk to hit Ogrewatch with trebs but at the same time there are few points to safely attk with cata or even rams (open filed and very close to red spawn and support from red’s keep).
When your fighting a world that is nearly = to yours then keeps and tower will not changes hands often unless your going for attking more then one target at a time. If your moving as a zerg then the other side will counter your zerg with a zerg of there own. Such is the way of LARGE scale fight the ideal behind any WvW or RvR game.Thinking about this a bit more i think its terms of risk ppl are willing to take the ones who tend to use trebs often take very low risk but for a high cost where cata are a bit more risk for lower cost and rams the highest risk for the lowest cost. The lowest risk of all is just simply hiding in a tower or keep though. You cant changes humans and they will chose the lowest risk most of the time even if it becomes the highest cost.
Fully upgraded and well defended? What world are you living in? No, it’s just three fools on arrow carts. I’ve been playing WvW for a year. This is not a matter of balenced servers. It’s just absurd kitten.
No it is not even great in terms of meta. Guess what the players at the treb get to do? Stand around watching the treb fire.
FIX.
ARROWCARTS.
The thing is ppl where standing at trebs even before the AC update. Its just how you play in larges scale fights when your aiming to take down a wall on a keep or a tower if your teams are evenly matched. If one group is out number or there is no one in the tower or keep you use rams. This is what is also know as PvD. Now that world are getting more on lines with each other same number of players and some what same level of skilled commanders you will find the game falling more into long term attks and you will find that only during the down times that you see ninjas and or rushing doors with rams or golmes.
Now it would be nice if they made it so all weapons of wvw must be made where they can be hit by players and other line of sights weapons such as blista but that more of something that needs to be fixed for all wvw weapons and not just AC.
I don’t want an attack on Ogrewatch to require building trebs and take a ton of time to accomplish. That’s what keeps and SM should be for. Pre-patch there were so many epic keep battles. No one bothers attacking the keeps. I can’t remember the last time SM changed hands. WvW has been reduced by AC’s to a boring slog for mid level towers.
I have respect for people / companies that admit they made mistakes. There’s nothing wrong with saying “Look, we had time to think and we made an error, sorry about that. Here’s the fix.” Why can’t Anet just do that? We won’t lose respect for them, we’ll be grateful and gain respect.
Last night i tryed and it was a mess, i fell something missing, everyone i fight over damage me….
Did you have the right ratio of condition damage to zerker burst damage? It won’t work without some zerker gear. Regardless, I’m sorry you had a bad experience.
One solution could be to up the purchasing cost and supply cost of arrow carts so less folks bought them. Make them the most expensive and time consuming thing to build in the game. Even higher than golems. I’m thinking 5 gold each and tons of supply. And change the skin so they look more deadly. They ’re just too cheap and fast to build now. Or you could always reduce the insane damage and ridiculous range. Either one.
Try mine (shameless plug): https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Hidden-Fire-New-Mesmer-Build-WvW/first#post1981812
Personally, I do. I’ll let other people comment as to it’s viability. One way to cheaply swap stuff out to new stats is if you have badges from WvW you can trade them in to the new weapon vendors in EB and pay roughly 1 gold & 200 badges to get any exotic weapon or armor with any stats you want. Then use a transmutation stone to save the skin you want. I did this with my weapons, gloves, and chest piece. I did have to buy a few trinkets, runes and sigils tho but I kept a lot of my rabid & carrion gear.
Staff is working more and more for me. Tried it a bunch tonight.
What stats/sigil do you have in the staff?
Thanks
Sigil of Corruption.
I wanna thank Anet for curing my WvW addiction with these arrow carts. Before the April 30th patch I would play WvW all the time. I’d hurry home to get back online, would check score updates obsessively, and had a blast. WvW was fun, epic and rewarding so it got addictive fast. Once the arrow carts came in with their insane damage WvW has been incredibly annoying and frustrating. I’ve been playing less and less until last night when I starting avoiding Gw2 altogether. Now I have more time for other games and my family. I’m getting more work done and I have Anet to thank. After this disastrous patch killed the meta game, I got my life back. Much appreciated.
Confusion was not a win button. It was a complex condition that was woven into the core of the Mesmer class. There are 5 different traits that alter and compliment the use of it. Any fool could get pink numbers, but to really use confusion well required skill, precision, and balance. And it was one of the only counters to zerg blobs. When confusion was nerfed into the dirt because of forum QQ’ing by inexperienced WvW players we lost a central condition to the game.
As per the OP, I agree that we need a buff to confusion or a reworking of it. It’s almost nonexistent in WvW now. On a rare occasion I’ll see confusion for a millisecond but it has no real teeth and is only a dim, flickering shadow of it’s former glory. Anet has to either give Mesmer new traits to replace the useless confusion traits, add 20% more damage, or completely rework the concept of confusion.
If there was a reworking, here’s what I would want:
Confusion no longer does any damage. Instead, it literally confuses the opponent by swapping abilities in their hotbar. You hit your cleanse ability, but it’s actually your attack button, although the icon hasn’t changed. And it stacks in duration. All randomized. (I can dream, can’t I?)
Or confusion turns on friendly fire for your targets and turns allies names red, making them vulnerable.
Both of your suggestions would destroy part of the design of this game as well as would be no fun at all to play against. It wouldn’t even be close to balanced.
I think the fact that they are reigning confusion in to be just another condition is fair, but if that’s the case then the potential damage should be more easily stackable or the skills the are on should be improved. This is likely exactly what will happen with retal as well.
Dude, I was joking. Man alive…..
Confusion was not a win button. It was a complex condition that was woven into the core of the Mesmer class. There are 5 different traits that alter and compliment the use of it. Any fool could get pink numbers, but to really use confusion well required skill, precision, and balance. And it was one of the only counters to zerg blobs. When confusion was nerfed into the dirt because of forum QQ’ing by inexperienced WvW players we lost a central condition to the game.
As per the OP, I agree that we need a buff to confusion or a reworking of it. It’s almost nonexistent in WvW now. On a rare occasion I’ll see confusion for a millisecond but it has no real teeth and is only a dim, flickering shadow of it’s former glory. Anet has to either give Mesmer new traits to replace the useless confusion traits, add 20% more damage, or completely rework the concept of confusion.
If there was a reworking, here’s what I would want:
Confusion no longer does any damage. Instead, it literally confuses the opponent by swapping abilities in their hotbar. You hit your cleanse ability, but it’s actually your attack button, although the icon hasn’t changed. And it stacks in duration. All randomized. (I can dream, can’t I?)
Or confusion turns on friendly fire for your targets and turns allies names red, making them vulnerable.
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Welcome to the purple hordes! We love new mesmers. I came from Eng too, it’s a great background to have. Mesmer is tough at first until you hit level 40. Stick with it. It’s really a class that opens up significantly when you get access to all the traits. We are having a bit of an identity crisis (perfect for our class) at the moment because of the disastrous, wrong-headed april 30th nerfpocalypse which destroyed our glam / confusion builds in WvW. That aside, there are still many viable builds out there, like the one I’ve been running recently:
Not worth it imo unless they rework the trait system. You have to give up so much good stuff in traits in order to get a proper glam build going that it really leaves you weak.
Try my build before you quit. I designed it to make use of all the condition gear I grinded. It’s quite fun and revitalized my interest in the class.
Played the staff version today and yeah its great, i like the utility and survivability.. Won a few 1v2s and survived against more but yeah.
Staff is working more and more for me. Tried it a bunch tonight.
My server has been engaged in a 3 hour long struggle to capture Durios. Not Hills, not Garrison, Durios. The reason is that the other server stacked it to the gills with arrow carts. You can’t get NEAR the kitten. Even building catapults doesn’t work because of the range on the AC’s. Crazy. The worst part is that a downed wall used to mean victory. Not any more. We broke that wall THREE times and each time our zerg was wiped trying to enter the tower because of all the AC’s raining death down from the walls. Even porting in doesn’t work because you’re still in AC range. Then the enemy zerg lazily wanders over when they’re good and ready and clears all the trebs we built at umber. They yawn and saunter off. Rinse, repeat for 3 freaking hours. And we’re the lower-pop server. See, if Anet wanted to help low-pop severs, they failed miserably. SM does NOT EVER FLIP. One server holds it for the whole week. See, the bigger servers can grab and hold now without fear of any retaliation. If Anet doesnt fix this soon I’m not sure how long I’m gonna stay with this game. VERY frustrating.
So you have their supply line umber. So they have to run supply from outside. You can treb from umber like you said you did. So you can treb their acs away.
Now the fact that they lazily destroyed your trebs but didnt flip umber? Means they didnt have the numbers to oust you. So you rebuild a treb and destroy their acs. It also means that they must have been running supply in from elsewhere, so stop them, once you accomplish that no more rebuilt walls, no more rebuilt acs inside and you waltz on in.
We had a similar battle in my tier. I was defending. We had 2 ac 2 balissta left that the umber trebs couldnt hit and were outnumbered 2 to 1. the trebs had destroyed maybe 4 acs. We sallied a few times to destroy trebs, they rebuilt them. Eventually we ran out of supply, having to run it from SM and so we stopped wall repairs. They attacked and died to our acs and ballies. Then one bright spark on the opposing team, stealthed in and started taking down acs. He got both before we got him, thieves can be like that
and then he came back and did it again, took him a few attempts to get my ballista cos I kept point blank spreadshotting him. He was just one player. Had a few of them coordinated all our siege would have been gone on the first attempt. As it was he solod all the siege down with a few repeat attempts, whist the rest stopped us resuppying. Had we had more siege it certainly would have been more difficult for him, but not impposible. Incidentally thieves have been asking for a wvw role, tada there it is.
They took the tower. It took them a fair while longer than before the update, but before the update the tower would have been lost in 3mins flat.
Oh but they did flip umber. And how. The problem with the L2p argument is that what bugs me isn’t adapting to new situations. Eventually we will all adapt to these Holy Arrow Carts of the OP. New tactics are already developing. The problem is the new tactics are boring, frustrating, and just not fun. Who wants to slowly deplete supply lines and build trebs and guard trebs and finally, after hours and hours, take a tower? We want combat and diversity of game play.
WvW has gotten so slow with this arrow cart buff they are far to strong. They are being used for everything even open field fights. I got on today and played for two hours while the whole time working on taking hills. Trebing and counter trebing since the amount of arrow carts prevented anything else. 2 hours later I was bored and tired of watching nothing happen the opposing server never tried to come out and fight us just hide behind the arrow carts.
If this was an attempt to split zergs it was horrible and is doing much more damage then the zergs.
I hope this is fixed soon and quickly this new slowed down game can be a game killer. Not just for me but i’m sure a lot of people.
If anything the dreaded April 30th patch of doom was a huge shot in the arm of zergs and a massive buff for servers who are already dominating. Now that glam confusion mesmers are extinct (RIP) zergs are unbreakable. But the AC buff was far, FAR more damaging to the meta-game of WvW. I’ve been playing games for over 20 years and I’ve never seen a single patch cripple a game so intensely. My server has been engaged in a 3 hour long struggle to capture Durios. Not Hills, not Garrison, Durios. The reason is that the other server stacked it to the gills with arrow carts. You can’t get NEAR the kitten. Even building catapults doesn’t work because of the range on the AC’s. Crazy. The worst part is that a downed wall used to mean victory. Not any more. We broke that wall THREE times and each time our zerg was wiped trying to enter the tower because of all the AC’s raining death down from the walls. Even porting in doesn’t work because you’re still in AC range. Then the enemy zerg lazily wanders over when they’re good and ready and clears all the trebs we built at umber. They yawn and saunter off. Rinse, repeat for 3 freaking hours. And we’re the lower-pop server. See, if Anet wanted to help low-pop severs, they failed miserably. SM does NOT EVER FLIP. One server holds it for the whole week. See, the bigger servers can grab and hold now without fear of any retaliation. If Anet doesnt fix this soon I’m not sure how long I’m gonna stay with this game. VERY frustrating.
Fantastic no show by NSP this weekend. Hope people remember how to log in during the week.
I know. It’s rather pathetic. I think our whole server is pouting about the arrow cart mess.
Sure it’s been said a million times here, but they gotta roll back that AC damage!!! Basically camps are the only things flipping any more. Capturing smaller towers like Ogrewatch and Durios used to be simple and effective, allowing for assaults on the larger control points in the area. Now just getting a tower like Ogrewatch requires dropping trebs. Trebs!!! It took us over 40 minutes to get the door down and when it finally fell, the AC’s held the choke point long enough for the enemy zerg to finally get there and wipe us. It was completely absurd. Plus the AC boost has thrown the server balance in my tier out of wack. We used to be the top, but everyone got so frustrated with WvW after the recent patch that now we’re chronically undermanned. Things just don’t flip anymore. Keeps don’t change hands, things don’t move. It’s all about nabbing camps and building Arrow Carts. It should be called ACvACvAC. The worst part of it is hearing commanders tactics reduced to: “Build an AC here.” It’s the knee-jerk response to everything. Yes, there was a lot of criticism about the Karma train PvD issue, but honestly this is far worse. With ZERO karma trains no one is drawn to WvW for xp or karma, It’s just not worth it. Killing tower lords is just more fun then guarding AC’s.
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UPDATE: Just got done playing and testing stats. If you go too far with zerker gear the condition part of the build is lost. But if you push away too hard from p/pr/crit you won’t get that great burst. It has to be just right. I’ve settled on a combo I like. Switched the GS from pure Berserker to Rampager. Got two zerker trinkets, left the rest carrion and rabid. Working great. Check it out (I updated the gear section):
I decided to go for condition duration boosts so the fire will last enough to be threatening. I went to 4x runes of the Air and 2x Runes of Lyssa. Then added Sigil of Smoldering to the sword, added Sigil of Corruption to the GS, kept Sigil of fire on the Torch. Used Rare Veggie Pizza so burn duration is up around 80%. Works VERY well. I love the effect. I don’t miss the lightening storm and no more stealth break. Been using maintenance oil for a little extra precision. Can get up to 1,000+ condition dam with full 25 stacks of Corruption and Signet (see below).
I also tried out blink extensively (instead of Veil) and I gotta say, it’s really worth it for this build. Incredible results. Blinking while stealthed is fantastic. It can get you out of stun lock, get you away from foes after your main attack, and teleport you into your target for the main attack. Really love blink in there.
Last thing I played with was swapping Arcane Thievery with Signet of Domination. The reason for this was I wanted a stun. Often times you’ll want to freeze a player so you can pull off your main attack (Prestige + Blurred Frenzy) with them stuck in the middle of it, unable to dodge. The combo of all three is devastating. Especially with fire duration extended. Plus the added CD with no cost to crit/pr is really nice. Plus I’m finding Arcane Thievery to be a tad wonky. Sometimes it doesn’t proc, cast time takes a second too long. Better to just blink out of there and cleanse with torch 2.
Still using GS although a lotta folks are having a great time with staff. I like the range on GS and the burst for iZerker. But Staff is really awesome too. Pulling off your main attack in Chaos Storm and Chaos armor is really awesome.
(edited by Entropy.4732)
I was playing last night adding condition damage and i can assure you that it’s solve the damage of the staff, at least for me. I love it. The staff allow you to be in the middle of all, the combos with Phase Retreat and iLeap, the versatility and utility is too much to abandon it.
The challenge is find the right gear. The right mix between stats. Cd must be added enough, but you can’t forgive have enough power/precision for finish and toughness/vitality for survive heavy spike and cd, even with the ability for remove some. The key is find the best mix for you , including the food ; )
Superior rune of undead could be good too against spike damage if you test that you’ve added enough cd.
I’ll read you later. Good luck. testing ; )
Brilliant. I love the adjustments people are making. I’m still using GS, but staff is an awesome play style too.
I was trying this and variations of it yesterday, and i love it! I also tried it with staff instead of GS (since i also have rabid from before the patch and thought staff lends itself to condition damage more) and it works great for survivability and confusing you opponent but the damage is a bit… meh. I also didnt know if the condition damage was worth it but you get in confusions aswell (even though its now half damage, it helps a bit i suppose..).
But basically the only thing i cared about was having fun with people and annoying the hell out of them until they got angry and made mistakes to let me win
EDIT: I’ve just seen the posts about condition duration now about clones so I’m thinking of trying out the staff again and giving it more of a go maybe with + con duration runes or some different trinkets or something, burning from clones also work with the idea behind the build
Thinking something like this:
Awesome! So glad you dig the build! I like the changes you made. I’m gonna play around with staff a bit too and condition duration. Let us know how it goes.
not sure if you saw this since patch…
from what people say. conditions applied by clones are now effected by condition durration bonus. so thats a big buff for conditions like sharper image and image type stuff. not sure if conditions on clone death were working before patch but they should be longer also.
Awesome. Some condition duration food might really help this.
Really fun looking build – spawn a bunch of high damage illusions, then disappear while they fight for you.
But agree with ammayhem, drop the cond dmg, focus on P/Pr/CrtDmg/T. Since you’re taking the trait that gives Phantasms fury, focus your build on that + stealth/deception/teleports:
Also, how to optimize Zerker stats – make sure you get the best bang for your Crit Damage buck:
http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/18q7oe/not_all_slots_are_created_equal_dos_and_donts_of/
http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/12dmi5/tip_stat_optimization_with_crit_damage/
PS – I went with 6x Runes of the Centaur instead of 6x Air because if you get hit by AoE while you’re stealthed, and that triggers the 6x Air Lightning Strike, you’ll get knocked out of stealth.
Centaur gives a lot of Power, plus longer-duration (AoE) Swiftness. Only wasted set bonus with Centaur is Bleed duration.
Great points. I have to check out that stealth breaking thing! Maybe I’ll scale back to 4x Runes of Air and fill in something else. Right now I’m liking the condition dam but I’ll try to reduce it and up p/pr/t/ crit a bit more through trinkets. See how that feels. Thanks for the links. If you try the build out, please post your findings.
Update:
Okay, I decided to not fully switch to zerker gear otherwise I’d lose too much vitality / toughness / condition dam. If this build gets too glass canon it gets difficult to pull off. I settled on chest piece Berzerker, and all weapons Berseker. The rest stays carrion / rabid / knights. Except for Berzerker back piece with ruby upgrade.
I took Benjamin’s suggestions and went with 6x Superior Runes of the Air, Superior Sigil of Fire on Torch, Superior Sigil of the Geomancer on GS, and since I wanted to keep condition up a little bit more, Superior Sigil of Corruption on Sword. The result is very, VERY effective. Wow. The main attack (Prestige + Blurred Frenzy) hits like an tank now, and if you swap quickly to GS after, you add more bleeds on top of it. The speed boost on heal really hits the sweet spot. To the above poster who wanted to forego condition dam, I say try it out. You may dig it. Personally I disagree. I got about 750 condition dam now (down from 1600 on my confusion mes) and that 750 still hits hard on burning. Ticking about 480 (much more with 25 stacks of Sigil of Corruption) on burn. Plus we got Phantasms applying bleeds, clone kills applying random, and Sigil of Geomancy applying bleed too. It all adds up fast and the conditions freak players out.
Lightening strike often strikes during the main attack, while yer invulnerable, and Fire AOE is awesome from Sigil of fire. Fits the build concept great too. Plus, with Phantasms getting fury, and the higher precision, your iZerkers always crits.
Blink works well, I also like portal dropped before you stealth in to pull off your main attack. After blurred frenzy, drop B portal and invis to get outta there. I’m still hanging on to veil for now. Comes in handy. Also, portal bombing work amazingly well with this build.
I’ll try to get a video up soon. Still trying out food combinations. Suggestions welcome!
(edited by Entropy.4732)
It’s a nice base idea, but the mix between condition and zerk is a little odd, however it may work. I would drop veil, nice stealth, but is glitchy for me. Blink confuses people even more with the instant teleport, and if you roll into it you create a clone at your position and appear elsewhere. Go for 6x runes of the air, more swiftness for a start, crit damage is useful for you since you have 20 in dueling. The 20% lighting on hit procs a lot and can hit for 6k, great damage there.
Sigil of fire on the sword would work great, good aoe fire damage, complements the build and a sigil of geomancy on the of torch for bleeds on swap is great. I’d like to see some videos of this in action as well.
Thanks for the suggestions! I’m gonna try the sigils and runes out. Any thoughts on food? Will attempt to get some video of the build soon. Thanks again for your interest.
As an ex-Rabid mesmer, thank you for sharing this
Some thoughts:
- Blink is another stun breaker, and it can come really in handy in situation like those you describe. Stealth + Blink is confusing for enemies. You can actually swap that with Veil, I always disliked Veil in a solo situation as for its huge cooldown.
- Berserker gear wouldn’t make you last that long. I am farming a SE/CoF (Knight/Zerk) right now, as I wanted to go Zerker too, but the lack of Toughness coming from Rabid gear made me think.I will try this out, and let you know something. Cheers!
Great thoughts guys! I’ll try blink out. And yes, full zerker might weaken you too much. Let me know how your test of the build goes!
I’ve been running this new build that still utilizes some condition damage. Check it out.
Hey there my purple comrades! After being heart-broken by the April 30th patch, yes I was a glam confusion mesmer for months, I started theory-crafting a new build that would make use of SOME of the condition trinkets that we all grinded so hard for. I’m switching my gear to berserker, but keeping some of the condition items as well. Still figuring out the balance. Anyway, I stumbled upon a build I think has potential. It’s extremely fun in WvW and gives great survivability with high burst potential, uses non-confusion condition dam (fire + random), and is flexibly useful as both a roamer and to bust up small zergs. I’m sure I’m stepping on other build’s toes, so apologies if this is already out there in another form. I give you… “Hidden Fire”!! (may need to copy URL into browser).
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fgAQNAsfRlwzKqHWzmGb9IipH9WwBckUoavWJF42FC-TEAAzA
Overview: With this build you are an invisible assassin who truly lives up to the mesmer concept by distracting your foes with clones that deliver random conditions when killed, burning everything with pink fire, and evading your foes by staying invisible as long as you can. Your goal is to infiltrate small groups or even zergs while stealthed with “The Prestige” then burst into sight spreading fire everywhere and simultaneously slashing around you with blurred frenzy. Then go stealth and roll back, creating tons of clones while hitting with your iZerker for high burst, stealth again, cleanse conditions, then move in for more of the same. If done properly, you are invisible a ton and your foes are covered in conditions and terrified of where you will strike next. Mostly you want your foes to kill your clones, spreading conditions to them with the debilitating dissipation trait, but a well timed mind wreck or daze can’t hurt. I fought two thieves by myself today and managed to down both solo. It’s not so much a quick killer as a slow, deadly mixture of striking and retreating. You will often find yourself running into the heart of danger, stealthed. Pick the right nerve cluster of players and you can really scare the hell out of a small group when you burst into view, surrounded by pink fire and whirling blades. Then vanish as quickly as you appeared. Blurred Frenzy will make you invulnerable, but you can also use distortion for that extra burst of invul. Be prepared for a ton of running and dodging and constant movement.
Traits: 20(III, IX), 20(II, X), 30 (IV, V, XII), 0, 0 – Dam burst comes from Phantasms so we go for 15%. Torch is a huge part of this build so you really want Cleansing Conflagration for both the decreased cooldown and the condition removal. For Dueling, I really debated these ones. You could go with any number of choices. I settled on Phantasmal Fury and Deceptive Evasion. But once I get my crit% up I’ll swap to Blade Training or Desperate Decoy. 30 in Chaos, the meat of the build. The big prize here is Prismatic Understanding. With so many invisibility skills, that extra 1 second really helps. And the random boon is great. Debilitating Dissipation is great, because most mobs and players in WvW will shred your clones before they get a chance to even shatter. This turns that against them AND uses all that condition gear you were gonna toss. Okay, you gotta toss some of it (RIP Confusion) but not all. And Illusionary Defense is good because you need survivability to get out of tight corners.
Skills:
Decoy is key, clone generation and stealth. Nuff said. Veil, great stealth. Long. I debated Arcane Thievery a ton. There are a bunch of other slot skill you could try here. But at the end of the day I found myself really wanting a quick cleanse other than the traited torch to turn the tables. You get hit with a lot of conditions with this playstyle so you need it. Or null field. Mass invis (of course).
Weapons:
Sword/Torch – GS. Staff could work too if you want to throw on Chaos Armor before your main attack to spread more conditions, but then you lose the crazy power of iZerker (bugs aside). iMage, despite his pitiful state, can come in handy at times to fill the air.
I’ve been trying an interesting hybrid. By swapping out “Empowered Illusions” with “Crippling Dissipation” and using Focus and Scepter (Sw/T – Sc/F) You get an incredible amount of crowd control. It’s amazing for both zergs and solo. Try to produce as many clones as possible and almost never shatter so your foe kills as many of them as they can. Check it out.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fgAQRAsf7dlwzKqHTzpGb9IipH9WwBckUUavWJF42FC
(edited by Entropy.4732)
Mesmer needs some love after the spirit crushing nerf on the 30th. Fixing scepter would be the way to do it. Especially if it employed non-confusion condition dam. Give us more burning!
we need a main hand pistol since anet have RUINED sceptor.
Yes. This. A new MH weapon.
Roger that. Thanks!
Hey all. Quick question. This is prolly easy to test but I’m at work and looking for a fast answer. If you equip two of the same weapon on separate swaps, as in Sword/Pistol & Sword/Focus does the other sword abilities run on a separate cool down timer? Or are they connected? So, in other words, if you were running Staff/Staff could you cast Chaos Storm then swap to the second staff and cast Chaos Storm again immediately even though the first staff cool down was blown? Or if all cool downs were blown on the other weapon would the others be refreshed on the swap? Never see people running this so I’m assuming the cool downs are connected regardless of the actual weapon set in play.