Guild Wars 2

Werrier

And try to look at Legendaries as just a skin and not a “ooh shiny skin with particles” because there are plenty of other skins with particles that are much, much, much, much cheaper (and a few that are just as pricey!)

They’re a pretty good long-term grind goal if you have nothing better to do. But I agree, just slotting Exotics is good enough for the most part.

I would highly suggest going for Ascended over a Legendary simply because, unless you got lucky with a Precursor, you’re going to spend more on that alone than on a full Ascended set of equipment.

You can do P2 on a Necro bar Alphard. Alphard might be do-able, particularly with the new traits, but the execution will be very difficult. Every other fight in P2 (and run segment) is soloable on a Necro.

I’ve done Belka, Abomination, and even Brie on my Necro solo. Lupicus I have yet to legitimately solo (I’ve had runs where my duo partner dies within the first 10% and then I finish the rest, but I’ve never fully soloed). Brie is a bit tedious, but pretend you’re selling the path and just clear RIsen waves before killing her in Phase 2. You’ll be safe, just make sure to tag every mob before they get to the Terminal use Plague or Lich to get Stability and tag/hurt lots of mobs. Make sure to leave Grubs alive since they don’t hurt the terminal, distract the Technicians, and allow easy Rallies.

I’ve duo’ed P2 with my Necro (Assassin Power build, using my Mes ascended gear) and a Warrior friend. For Alphard, I had my friend body block the projectiles for the most part (because I’m mean like that). Other than that, I’ve soloed Brie, Abom, and Belka by myself successfully (on a Necro).

Sorel.4870:

But if it was to stay this way, maybe the CDs need to be reworked a bit, since the heal is pretty much spammable now.

I mean so can Mirror… especially traited.

Sadrien.3470:

Fay.2357:

Justine.6351:

I was taking 4-4.5k shatter hits, something gonna get nerfed hard I suspect. Maybe that’s normal? I don’t know I havnt mesmered for like 2years.

It’s normal considering how much damage everyone is doing now.

12k backstabs on a 4 to 5s effective CD if landed…. shatter hits don’t seem that unbalanced to me.

But they’re Mesmers! They need to deal 1k with Shatters on pure glass cannon!

P2, soloable with basically anyone?

P1 is also doable but you need to buy Tar help.

Have her play an Asura Thief. This is because Thief weapon skills are by far the most… enjoyable without any knowledge or experience of the game. Once you get the hang of the game and she’s hooked, then have her reroll as something else (or just continue the thief).

Also Asura have the spunky animations that make them the master race.

#masterraceconspiracy

I just realized Torch has a trait. Then I looked at it and realized Torch doesn’t have a trait.

Treetoptrickster.4205:

Esplen.3940:

I don’t think SoI will affect it. If you notice SoI it states which Shatters it recharges. The explicitness I think is intentional for the release of Chronomincers.

Yeah, I read over the description before I was going to submit a “bug” report and saw that they thought about that combo. Still. Continuum Split/Shift and Mimic equals quadra casting utilities. Imagine 4x the Illusion of Life!

Ummm… you only need one. Two at most.

I mean, I feel like I need Chaotic Dampening as it is with Staff (it just makes it so much nicer, having such low cooldowns). With the un-nerfed version… oh my god that would be disgusting.

Now, please, stop dropping Light Fields on my Chaos Fields, please.

I can teach Arah 1 and 2 for non-speedrunners and also CM for casual groups that have a little bit of reflects and/or stealth (aka 1 Guard + 1 Thief or 1 Mes).

Feel free to try me out whenever, I’ll be on soon-ish.

I don’t think SoI will affect it. If you notice SoI it states which Shatters it recharges. The explicitness I think is intentional for the release of Chronomincers.

4 Blinks. 4 Feedbacks.

Have you read the description of Portal? It breaks your Portal if you drop another entrance.

Or you can be me and forget to put on a ranged weapon on mai but stand at the back of the room and block all her teleport shots…

“I’M HELPING!”

I think it would be worth it for me if it increased the stack capacity for everything not just collections because I have a few thousand of Crafting Mats so getting an expander wouldn’t really help (it would let me wait longer to pull things out of the collection, but it wouldn’t let me hold things there, really).

The way I store things is to wait until I can’t deposit, then retrieve the full stack (250) and place it in the bank. I store that in a dedicated tab and when it or my bank gets full, I put it into a designated bank character. Of course this kind of… “system” requires a lot of investment but it’s arguably more cost-effective than getting a collection expander (since most of what I get is the same items over and over again) although if I were to get a collection expander I could save maybe 3-5 slots (not a lot compared to how many slots I have of stacks) by placing items I don’t get a lot of but have a stack or two of.

For example, I’m at 650ish Ectos, so I’d have to get at least 2 Expanders to fit them all into my bank. That’s the same for Wintersday Crafting Materials (although some of them I’m at 4+ stacks). Then there are low rare crafting mats and also combined crafting mats (I have a lot of planks, ingots, and bolts… like, a lot). And then we can get to Quartz and Dragonite where I have too many stacks (and I don’t want to do the karka hunt. I’M LAZY… fine I’ll do it later…)

Rentapest.6503:

It’s the fact they can fully bull themselves, while removing all your buffs, have endless clones up at all times, stealth as much as a thief can, and as soon as you’re targeted apply 25+stacks of every condition known to mankind!

And they have 4 sets of weapon skills for every weapon equipped and they can summon even more weapons for even more skil-

Oh… we’re not talking about Emenelemenaitlisktnemstss.

GummiBear.2756:

I might be tempted to try something like that, hope you dont mind i more or less copy your build? probably gonna make a few adjustments here and there i think though, for once duelist discipline seem to be bugged ATM so that trait basically does nothing for now

It doesn’t apply the bleeding but you run it for the cdr.

I don’t have Sinister and it didn’t matter that I wasn’t hitting 12k confusion with Assassin because Power Blocks were ranging from 2-6k and so was everything else in between. It’s more of a Power Block interrupt PvE build than a hard hitting condition (my version).

tobascodagama.2961:

Esplen.3940:

It’s not percentage reduction. It’s 2s per Phant.

That makes it a lot easier to plan your shatter usage, as well. Assuming you’ll have 3 Phantasms up, you’ll wait for your weapon’s Phantasm summon cooldown to reach ~6 seconds, then you shatter and immediately resummon it. Then swap weapons and resummon your other weapon Phantasm. Supplement with a clone or a utility Phantasm or the pDefender from Mental Defense.

This definitely gets way better when we get Chronomphantasma, of course. Then we can recover potentially 12s off all of our Phantasm cooldowns by shattering twice.

Moreso with the time swap thingy.

Why don’t you ask them to kindly form a new party instead?

Fashion Mage.3712:

Feel My Wrath is great in PvE and decent in PvP, but Signet of Courage is basically just a terrible version of Tome of Courage.

SoC is pretty good if you’re having trouble in Thaumanova Reactor fractal heat room. It heals past Poison, Agony, and any other healing reduction. Had a bit of trouble during a 5 Guard run.

Enjoying Dueling/Dom/Chaos or Dueling/Ill/Chaos running a modified Condi build.

Based on the 12k confusion build I modified it to become more damage oriented it’s very bursty and kills things quickly.

Your weapon skills should always be on cooldown (I tried it with Rampagers as well, but I find it better with my Assassin gear). Everything should be Assassin’s if possible, Zerk could work as well. Try to maintain Chaos Armor to reduce cooldown on Staff. Use Mimic on Feedback if fighting near lots of mobs (not a large cluster, but a lot of clusters) and get Chaos Armor. Otherwise double Blink 4 lyfe. Healing Skill is whatever you want, you can use Time Warp or Mass Invis.

Traveler Runes are nice for movespeed (Runes of Speed are usable as well, etc, etc). I personally don’t have any on my killing setups so I just run around and double/single blink to enemies or objectives. You can also use Centaur runes for swiftness (probably better). If you don’t like Sword, feel free to use Scepter. If you can position the #3, it’s great, otherwise Sword is better for cleaving PvE etc etc etc.

I feel like it would be too powerful with both Ground Targeting or self-targeting.

Being able to drop it onto a choke point is ridiculous. And yourself standing on that choke isn’t too hard.

I remember pre-patch having a noob-tube build for fighting the Molten Duo Fractal if my group couldn’t ever survive. It was a “solo” build meant for taking your time. Traited Blink Portal Feedback with Mirror Heal and Medic’s Feedback (it had a 10s cooldown back then). Sit on a dead NPC or ally and pop the Feedback then proceed to GS auto attack. If Bers jumps on you, blink away (don’t forget to drop an entrance portal across the fight from you) and continue auto attacking. Maintain Feedback to prevent Firestorm from hurting you. If Bers is about to blink onto you, cast Feedback on him, then blink onto Feedback after he blinks onto you. Use Portal if you’re panicking (or trapped in flame circles). Swap to Staff2 if you have no more blinks. Mirror when necessary.

Suuuuuper slow, but it works. Also you can retrait and change your gear after Bers dies since you have about 10s to OOC and retrait.

If you could just ground-target a Feedback you wouldn’t need to focus on as much stuff, not that that means anything and I’m just tangenting super hard right now so bye bye.

ASP.8093:

Lux.6490:

Can’t seem to find a build that suits any of my old playstyles

Tell us what you want to do and maybe someone can help you. There’s plenty of stuff to work with unless you were absolutely married to condi clone death or retal.

Lux.6490:

Now it seems, more than ever, than it is all about burst damage and textbook builds.

I’ve been playing progressively more “niche” builds since I started mez last summer and I feel like mostly the game’s actually keeping up with weird preferences fairly well. Traits keep getting better and various mechanics, generally, are easier to use. I’m finding it easier to do acceptable damage without going quite all-in on either shatter or phantasm stuff.

Yuh basically. I can trait for Phant damage and choose to add in interrupt or shatter damage or just go personal DPS instead.

Also since Mesmer are very trait reliant, having 3 Lines is sooooooo fantastic. I’ve looked at every other profession and I just keep coming back to Mesmer because I feel like having another line on Mesmer is much, much more significant than on any other profession.

That, and Mimic is fantastic.

Exciton.8942:

The answer is that we are indeed very hard to catch, haha.

You need to make sure you have enough CC or gap closers. But most mesmers run glass cannon. So one good hit is enough to make them panic. We still have very little condie clear unless we go for inspiration line. So immbo is really strong on mesmer.

However, if the mesmer runs PU, he will not die if he decides to disengage. Also it is the best if you play some mesmer youself. It is a good time to try one! After the patch, the class gets much easier and newbie friendly.

Yup. Just like a Thief. Bunker down (don’t literally stand still, please, you’re just going to kill yourself) and prepare to hit back. If they’re running a cheese or whittle build, they can probably escape. Otherwise they’re downed and you just need to find a way to stomp them.

Most things die so fast that you don’t need more than Feedback. While I agree that MoP adds a significant amount of DPS, I dislike the trait because it makes me feel like I should be spamming Mantras to get that sweet damage boost (which means I’m not dealing damage, therefore reducing my damage output). I understand that just activating the Mantras I pre-charge will give me a DPS boost, but if I’m fighting trash it doesn’t matter.

There are some fights where swapping to MoD is useful (actually, there are a lot of fights), but since you’re in a party of 5, you don’t need to be doing everything. In fact, a lot of the times I don’t bother with MoD because we have enough players to be taking care of all the other nonsense (1 thief stops both Abominations just before Lupi, MoD doesn’t affect Risen Hunter right after Grub/Abom boss, etc etc).

I dunno, maybe I’m lucky with PUGS. Then again, if we fail at least once, I’ll just swap to srsbznz solo mode and try to be a one man team with a lot of summons… I mean allies.

It’s already super powerful as it is. Getting another effect would be overkill.

You can solo the Reactor Core run as a Mesmer with Portal Blink Mimic, btw.

Portal Mimic Blink Blink run until you’re at about 15% hp, Portal and heal, enter Portal. Wait until Portal is about to end, you should regen to near full HP and enter Portal and run/roll to the end. Don’t forget to spam #1 for that sweet sweet 5% movespeed. Once at the end, wait for health and Blink cooldown. Hit first switch, blink to second and touch that booty.

Oh okay, that makes sense, then. I run with 80% crit and I saw bleeding, but it probably was Sharper since it wasn’t ticking very high.

The 2s Mirror is via traits, not from the utility skill. I’d like to clear that up. The utility skill ONLY gives you the buff to reset a cooldown by itself.

Everyone talks about this. I swap it on and off depending on the fight, and the reduction works as stated, and it also applies bleeding as stated.

What makes it bugged?

The only thing I can think of is the skill not reducing a cooldown if it causes an interrupt (Magic Bullet), but if you get an interrupt with something else, it will reduce the cooldowns of your other skills appropriately.

Exciton.8942:

I don’t know if it is worth taking both idefender and ienchanter just for the sake of shattering them and reducing cooldown.

By taking the GS trait and illusion line. You already have mirror blade and izerker on pretty low cooldown. Shattering 3 phantasms give you 6% cdr, which is about 1 sec. It is really not that big of a deal. Considering in a real fight situation, you also need to spend a lot of time on staff kiting and supporting.

It is after all an adept trait. Not build defining in any sense but some nice extra is you like to shatter your phantasms.

It’s not percentage reduction. It’s 2s per Phant.

mysticsicness.7598:

It would be fine if it was not for the trait being such a CORE MECHANIC!!! Might as well say “reroll untill next patch.”

All builds revolve around grenades?

I don’t really bother with Portal most of the time. People don’t know how to use Portal, and they also don’t pay attention to them. A lot of times it’s just a wasted cooldown and not worth it for the skip (I only really use it if it’s a long run like those in Arah P1 or P2 where people die… often).

With Mimic, Mesmers are refreshing in Dungeons. I usually always just run Feedback, Blink, Mimic and swap out Blink if I truly need a second utility (usually MoD). Mimic Feedback + Warden Ether Signet + Focus Traited = Ridiculous Reflection uptime. Assuming your Wardens don’t die, of course.

Just wait for Chronomancer and you’ll be able to Shatter the Phants twice.

Ragnarox.9601:

So wheres necro and mesmer nerfs too?

6 Days Ago
Healing Prism: Increased the base healing by 200%. Added a 10-second internal cooldown.

Nerfed due to interaction with Necro’s Vampiric Presence causing large amounts of AoE heals. Was not “disabled until a fix was available”, but simply nerfed to a state where it wouldn’t even be picked if it wasn’t a minor. (Some Mesmers on the forums have asked for this to be re-looked at and maybe changed to be a percentage of the base heal, with a slight scaling on Healing Power. This would address the VP heals while also allowing Mesmers to have AoE heals on a slightly useful scale.)

8 Days Ago
Chaotic Dampening: Reduced the recharge reduction percent of staff skills per pulse of chaos armor from 5% to 2%.

Nerfed because low cooldown on Chaos Storm from (non-bugged) interaction with this trait. While it is still a usable trait, the counter-argument to the nerf is that it is easily countered since anytime you’ll see a Mesmer with a Staff, you know they will have this trait and you can simply move away from their Chaos Storm, forcing them to chase you down and use Utility Glamours to obtain Chaos Armor again (effectively blowing the long cooldowns and wasting skills to chase you down and maintain low weapon skill cooldowns).

Power Block: Reduced the damage on interrupt by 17%.

Nerfed because high interrupt damage…? At least it doesn’t have an ICD… yet.

9 Days Ago:
Maim the Disillusioned: Reduced the torment from 2 stacks for 6 seconds to 1 stack for 6 seconds.

Apparently this was something that was already in the pipeline, but it doesn’t make sense for a Master trait to do so little. Arguably, if you have the right traits and utilities, you could apply 10+ stacks of Torment with this trait (20+ without the nerf), but it would mean you blow everything (and I mean everything. All your escapes, defenses, everything) to do something that most players can already deal with (condition removal is a thing, remember?).

I think this nerf makes most sense in regards to HoT, but since we’re not there yet, it hits a bit close to home.

Do note that all of these nerfs were done within 3 days of the release. Which does makes them feel very knee-jerky, especially since there were no bug fixes or buffs to the Mesmer after the patch (see: “Mesmer only gets nerfed in patches” dilemma).

So feel glad you got to enjoy your OP traits for a week and don’t look the gift horse in the mouth. If you got nerfed every (hot) patch, you would feel grateful for having had something broken for so long.

Xillllix.3485:

Lightning flash doesn’t work anymore on some places it used to work, like some stairs in WvW.

Sorry, I’m not an Elementalist, but the blink-like mobility checks do that for everyone. It both is and is not a bug. :/

Silverkey.2078:

Let’s just make an estimate
1 year to fix turret engineer while everybody was complaining about it
1 day to butcher mesmer’s chaotic dampening that nobody complained
… don’t hold your breath, next WvW year, your nerfed PU won’t allow you to escape engineer’s doomsday devices. But if by miracle you do, just shatter 4 stacks of torment to your enemy while he puts 30 stacks of burning on you

4 STACKS OF TORMENT? GG MESMERS ARE OP!

Fay.2357:

Esplen.3940:

Silverkey.2078:

The only somewhat weird one is the distortion one, since we get it from sword, signets or shatter only… but well….

Sword gives Blur, not Distortion. Functionally, it’s the same, but it won’t count as Distortion.

Blur is evade. Distortion is invulnerability. Functionally they are very different.

Ah yah, you’re right. I’m still living in the age of Lightning Shield not stunning through BF.

If you’re using Mind Wrack, you don’t need to have all three Illusions up. I’ve been doing single Illusion shatters now that we always have IP.

Levetty.1279:

Silverkey.2078:

And maybe mesmer is not the most urgent to nerf in any case…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3lQbbUJQroM

Can’t wait to see what reason they get out of this video to nerf Mesmer.

Because the interaction between Healing Prism x Vampiric is OP, must be the Mes’ fault. (Seriously, why a 10s ICD? What was the reasoning behind 10s?)

Silverkey.2078:

The only somewhat weird one is the distortion one, since we get it from sword, signets or shatter only… but well….

Sword gives Blur, not Distortion. Functionally, it’s the same, but it won’t count as Distortion.

Scale off of Condition Damage. :/

Nike, you do realize that there are other professions that utilize traps, bows, and fight Dragons.

The fact that every profession fights Dragons makes the whole “Dragonhunter” theme feel somewhat impersonal. Especially since there are Rangers (notably mistaken for Hunters constantly both within and outside of the game)… that fight Dragons… with Bows… and Traps.

So when you say Dragonhunter, it just feels like you’re another Ranger trying to be all buddy buddy with Logan Thackeray.

Oh, but you’re a Guardian? Woah there. So what makes you unique?

Oh, you have a skill that gives you wings and let’s you leap at your foes? That’s cute. You’re just making yourself look like a Ranger even more.

So what distinguishes you from a Ranger? The fact that you’re a Guardian? No. You’re not a Guardian anymore. You’re a Rang-… Dragonhunter… among 7 other Professions who all hunt Dragon minions. Okay. What.

And what if you’re not hunting Dragons? What if you’re mosing off in Metrica Province or thwacking some Charr in Ascalon? Oh, you still hunt Dragons? All 0 of them under your belt? Okay, okay, cool.

See, the difference between the Chronomancer and the Dragonhunter, at least in name, is that the Chronomancer gives a unique concept in design and execution.

Chronomancers are all about time-magic. Risk and reward over time. You won’t know if you made the right choice until after the fact.

Dragonhunters are all about… dragon hunting? Except, you know, they’re still hunting dragons alongside everyone else. Everyone.

Not ready now, but soon…

(Original Post)

I wouldn’t mind teaching Arah. It would give me a reason to get back into the game. I’ll see how busy I am in summer semester.

I used to run P1 and 2 religiously (I can still duo P1 and 2 [ignoring Grub boss on P1] and have soloed every fight on both paths [ignoring Grub boss on P1] although never soloed a full run). I can also do every single run part of P1 and 2. I don’t really do P3 since it’s a waste of time, in my opinion (it’s “easier” than P1 and 2, but it actually takes longer and rewards less, assuming minimal mistakes are made). I haven’t done it in such a long time that I don’t actually know the path well (basically just the mage battle I don’t know how to do since it’s not longer cheese-able). And I won’t bother teaching P4, because P4.

I do use Teamspeak. I have taught the runs and Lupicus fight multiple times. I know how to run the run parts (P1 after Ooze boss -> Entity or P2 after Belka -> Abomination) with Mesmer, Thief, Warrior, and Necromancer (all without the assistance of party members) and can give trait/utility/weapon tips for all professions for the runs and fights.

If I need to do an ingame proof of concept, that’s absolutely fine. I will not say that I am perfect, nor that I am completely salt-free, but I usually am comfortable with runs taking a while or multiple failures as long as I am not stressed.

For now, though, I should focus primarily on school until the semester is over. I won’t be on much except for daily home instance because of school but it should slow down in summer because I can’t go full-time due to course offerings.

Behellagh.1468:

Dante.1763:

Behellagh.1468:

Since the wallet can handle an almost unlimited amount of gold, why the use of a Guild Bank to shelter gold? That is what I don’t understand.

So people have gold reserves. You know, like a savings account in real life? thats what players use them for, well most. I have problems accidentally leaving guilds so i cant use a guild bank for that

So what you are saying is that you don’t have the discipline not to spend all of it if it was in your wallet? Then why don’t you put in a series of 100g bids for an eternity? The gold is sequestered from your spending ways, it costs you nothing and the bid is unlikely to ever be filled. Viola Voila, gold bank.

While this is a good way of having “savings”, it does not address the issue of personal wallets versus account wallets.

In regards to the debate on Personal Banks/Gold Inventories and practical uses.

Some players like to get into the spirit of things and limit their characters (or have different characters each having different wallets). By making the account-bound wallet, you no longer create that divide.

“Oh, I’m a new Sylvari, fresh from the tree. Look at me running around with 523 Laurels, 2931 Gold, and all of these Dungeon Tokens. Weeeeee!”

That’s just an example, but it is a playstyle. Some people enjoy having separate wallets, and not one gigantic wallet. It is not tricking your mind into thinking you have less money than you really have. It is playing each character individually, as opposed to one whole account entity.

The problem is that developers, with the introduction of the Account Wallet stated that to have an individual wallet, simply use a personal guild bank to denote each character’s gold (not quoted word for word). Now, with a limit being placed, players who may have more than 500g are being told you’re an edge case and your outdated playstyle has been completely phased out. Is that fair?

This isn’t for me to decide, nor do I fit in either category (I don’t mind having an account wallet, but I wouldn’t mind being able to “deposit” or “withdraw” to a personal wallet, either) but I just wanted to clear up some confusion on the party that is saying that the playstyle is dumb, unfounded, and/or has no real merits except to foster/nurture a psychological problem (not quoting anyone, simply extrapolating from the context). Which it isn’t. And it doesn’t… in some (most?) cases.

MtD required 2 targeted buffs before it became a viable option to compete with iP.

This is something that’s relatively unheard of regarding the Mesmer, because the patch notes tend to disagree with what actually gets changed…

Zaxares.5419:

Pixelpumpkin.4608:

Again: different people want different things.

Just release a toggle option, or two separate sets. Everybody would be happy.

It’s not so hard.

This. (It will mean more work for the artists though, so I can understand why ANet just took this route.)

I doubt it would be more work on the Charr/Asura front. However, for Humans/Norn/Sylvari, yes, it would be a bit of work.