Guild Wars 2

Spanny.9256:

did you read the mesmer patch notes on the wiki? winds of chaos is going to be able to bounce 2 times if you trait it, and it applies to clones as well

i use IE all the time, the extra bounce on WOC is hella rad even if it’s just for me, and the extra bounce on gs2 is killer especially if you throw it, run at your enemy, dodge+create clone, and shatter in less than half a second

Did you read my post?

Esplen.3940:

Most of the changes in this patch, towards making GW2 (and Mesmer gameplay) are not healthy or significant. The significant ones are unhealthy and the healthy ones are insignificant (because, you know, we’ve been shoved down the gutter so far every time we ask for these fixes that we’re so used to not having them cough IE cough Warden cough).

Did I mention both Warden and IE have been “fixed” numerous times, in addition to being “fixed” last Feature Pack? Oh, and they weren’t actually previewed on the Skill Bar, go figure.

Why are you talking about stances and balanced stances? I’m talking about Lich Form.

As far as I recall, all headgears are removed in cutscenes and have been for quite some time.

I honestly don’t mind the concept behind Living Story, but it should be in addition to frequent patches, not in lieu of them.

EDIT:

Sorry people will misunderstand my term of patches. I mean content, update, balance, and feature patches.

cranked.3812:

Mystic.5934:

they never change anything retroactively unless it’s a problem. usually there is a small reason for it: if they change bolts of silk to require 3 scraps instead of 2, that unfairly gives advantage to someone who refined their material early. in the short-term, it causes a bit of havoc. pretty quickly you forget it even happened. IMO, temporary upsets like that are a small price to pay for a fair and sensible game. This is also why I disagree with all time-gated crafting in this game.

Pretty much this ^^ Although, there is a legitimate reason to time gate things in the short term for market stability, but long term it needs to go after “x” amount of time.

Basically it boils down to anet’s knack for making things random and wildly inconsistent across anything they do. It happens all the time and apparently will never change. Maybe they just have a coin they flip to determine these types of things. Would really be the only logical explanation.

They have a team working on it. Team gets moved to something else. Other team works on it. Ideals differ. ???

Also, management never stays consistent with their ideals…

Ardyth.9286:

Mesmer is not easy to play, a point made in the GW2 guide.

That doesn’t mean that Arenanet should make it intentionally harder to play by “balancing” it and “giving it more build diversity” which actually translates to nerfing and reducing build diversity.

Yes, since release I have become a much better Mesmer player. It’s true. On the other hand, I do a lot less damage, even though I pay attention to a lot more, react much better, memorize animations, and play mind-games with opponents.

If you need more charges, map complete. Not only does map completion have a chance of awarding transmutation charges, but if you make new characters and map complete towns, you’re guaranteed to get them.

You have unlocked the skill Mantra Mastery. Since you’re a Mesmer, this trait will show up in the Dueling line. Click the Dueling line (do not click one of the circles, just click the line as a whole) and you should see it without a lock on top of it. I think it’s VI.

Lilith Ajit.6173:

Esplen.3940:

and again, that’s your face and hair, not the armor itself.

That was my Asura laughing at you. Nothing more.

Well I’m glad that you’re capable of having a discuss- oh wait, sorry wrong person.

and again, that’s your face and hair, not the armor itself.

Hmmm… now that I think about it… the armor both Kudu and Snaff wore is very, very feminine, along with multiple armors copy pasted from male -insert any race here- without their feminine (and not kittenty) counterparts.

(/sarcasm)

Sorry Lilith, but just because your hair is in a braid and has a bowtie doesn’t make every armorset you put on female. That armorset doesn’t look girl-ish at all, but it does appropriately match and accommodate your hair.

We’re talking about armor, not faces/hairs.

Spanny.9256:

Ross Biddle.2367:

It’s not so much a complaint as it is a factual statement of truth. There were some nice changes, and the meta concerns were unaddressed. What more do you want?

it seems to me that you think the only way to play is “go meta or go home,” when in reality if you actually play the game you’d understand that metas like condi damage is literally only utilized in hotjoin pvp. if you enter tpvp/pve ever you might see a max of one condi-oriented player, and that’s the ceiling.

you might get a better response if you detail what you feel is wrong with the gameplay and how YOU would fix it, instead of just basically spouting “UGH META”

I think you’re reading too far into what he’s saying, and not in a good way. You are both saying the same thing yet trying to argue about it.

There were a lot of nice things in the skill bar, but unless they were holding out on us (which is bad if they’re attempting to be transparent), then all of our “balance” changes were merely bug fixes/tweaks bar Scepter changes (and yes, I’m including PU, Clone Death, and Mimic as bug fixes/tweaks even though they’re somewhat larger than that). This is also not a good thing, because it means that Arenanet thinks that Mesmers are in a balanced position as it stands, which is clearly not true. While I agree that fixing our skills is a good approach, I personally think that it should be done in addition to balance, otherwise we get things like…

Sword 1 fix: To compensate for the damage bonus gained from the third strike, as intended, we reduced the overall damage output of Sword 1.

Wait what? So, Sword 1 was borked, which means that we weren’t doing nearly as much damage as was intended. So they fixed it, sweet! Then they immediately nerf it. Wait what? (Counterpoint: This is merging balance and skill-fixes depending on your point of view.)

Most of the changes in this patch, towards making GW2 (and Mesmer gameplay) are not healthy or significant. The significant ones are unhealthy and the healthy ones are insignificant (because, you know, we’ve been shoved down the gutter so far every time we ask for these fixes that we’re so used to not having them cough IE cough Warden cough).

Did I mention both Warden and IE have been “fixed” numerous times, in addition to being “fixed” last Feature Pack? Oh, and they weren’t actually previewed on the Skill Bar, go figure. These are the only “healthy” changes, as they promote traits/skills. IE is widely underused because it only affects the illusions made from Torch and Trident, in addition to all bouncing skills the player has. It doesn’t affect iDisenchanter or Staff clones, which means that you’re most likely not going to grab this unless you want to camp 3 trident clones (for whatever reason, because 3 whalers or mariners is wayyyyy better unless you want boons).

Lilith Ajit.6173:

My female asura looks like a girl.

I’m glad you’re using one of the three armorsets outfits that actually display the female version.

Still, I want to be a man if I can’t be a girl.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

Bugs happen. Skritt happens. I’ll complain after the patch when there are actual (not theoretical) things to complain about.

And we always get buffed crazy in December anyways.

Gotta wait after the patch to see all the undocumented changes we get… mostly nerfs, as usual.

Xaragon.3520:

Spectral walk is hilarious, Nothing funnier then being chased by a group of people with them right on your heels and then porting and running the other way.

Decoy while targeting a Moa then use blink?

Vol.7601:

Esplen.3940:

Wanze.8410:

ghost.3208:

Man I sure I am glad I bought the mini karka some time ago, who knows how many will be left now with people account binding them…

I’m probably one of them, hate the idea of wasting 1.7k gold but my collection :’(

Now Anet please bring back Foostivoo!!!

Somehow i fear that the Trading 2.0 blog post tomorrow might make items that are unobtainable right now (minis, recipes, skins etc.) available through npcs for a combination of gold/account bound currencies.

Laurels + Gold fixes everything. Time gate and gold sink.

I hope they include the timegated ascended materials. I’ve been hoarding them for awhile

Oh god, I have like 30 of all of the time-gated parts I still need to upgrade them, but I have no Dragonite so there’s no point. :/

Since my female asura can’t look like a girl, I’m down to look like a man

PvP and WvW are bad ways of getting achievements. If you want achievement points, you’ll get the most from doing [all] your dailies and [all] your monthlies. In your spare time, try to snab a few PvE achievements as well.

Arenanet

warriorjrd.8695:

Esplen.3940:

warriorjrd.8695:

Esplen.3940:

Probably because people can steal or copy the 30s of Stab, which shouldn’t really happen.

Gotta be careful of dem Mimic Mesmers… sigh

Too bad I can’t steal your double endure pain or 10s of condition immunity, if only, how the tables would turn…

You realize I’m a Mesmer main, right?

Doesn’t matter what class you play, it was a terrible argument defending stances.

Except, you know, the Stability lasts for the duration of the skill but ends when you cancel the form. By copying or stealing the boon, you’re getting something better than what the Necromancer gets. The fact that most people don’t use it for the full duration only helps apply it as an indirect nerf to others.

It’s not really a bug. A while after release, Arenanet updated the cutscenes to no longer include headpieces so that you could see your perty face while talking.

Ignoring the fact that people who RP or dress their characters typically like their look with the headpiece, Arenanet was content with the update and never gave it another thought.

Wanze.8410:

ghost.3208:

Man I sure I am glad I bought the mini karka some time ago, who knows how many will be left now with people account binding them…

I’m probably one of them, hate the idea of wasting 1.7k gold but my collection :’(

Now Anet please bring back Foostivoo!!!

Somehow i fear that the Trading 2.0 blog post tomorrow might make items that are unobtainable right now (minis, recipes, skins etc.) available through npcs for a combination of gold/account bound currencies.

Laurels + Gold fixes everything. Time gate and gold sink.

The whole reason for not having trans-type charges was because it would be confusing in WvW since you weren’t able to see what profession people were. Gear, weapons, and buffs were used to distinguish who was what profession.

Then in-combat outfits came along… and so did the profession icon…

While it’s not necessary, I would love to see it happen. It’s not like it’s particularly hard to do, and, if anything, they could make it cost 2 charges instead of 1 when slapping on a non-inherent skin (light → light = inherent).

I’d like to say that when I first died, I wasn’t sure about the downed skills. It’s hard to read them when you either die or rally, so you have to read them while getting hit (unless you know to get the chat link of the skills).

I think, if anything, they could just move the skills onto the Weapon Skills section so players can read about their Downed Skills without being downed. Maybe have a tutorial cutscene where it shows their player downed and then allows them to use their skills on a dummy while regening health when it goes critical (so they know they are losing health).

Otaur.9268:

Public Test Server/Realm… Every major MMORPG has had one to test changes on a large scale. Plenty of players would make characters on the PTR to test incoming changes, they would expect frequent changes as it is a test server, and the dev’s could get a ton of feedback based on the changes. Not to mention the numbers and data they can get from just observing the changes on their side.

Most PTR’s are just cluster…f’s catering to a playerbase to play new goodies before they’re fixed, balanced, and finalized.

In most cases, not only is it redundant content, and a preview which ruins the enormity/magnitude of a patch, but it also is rarely taken into consideration.

There are many more times that a PTR has revealed problems that don’t get addressed when the patch goes live.

Additionally, to state that Arenanet has no test server is a lie, as they have multiple alpha servers in their HQ. I’d go so far as to say some of the engineers have custom alpha servers to test their specific content instead of pushing onto the main branch. Making these public does not particularly help Arenanet in any given form or way, namely because it reveals things that they might not want to show (undocumented changes, small tweaks that may never make it live, etc) in addition to the fact that Arenanet, (as long as they didn’t lie about this), uses cloud-based services to get “bots” to effectively “PTR” their content. They can moniter and gather data just as effectively, without having all the whine and grime that players will throw at them.

The problem is that Phantasms account for roughly 40% of our sustained dps, meaning unless you’re going for a non-sustained dps burst build (aka Shatter), you’re not going to use your class mechanic.

I like how Warrior holding onto their class mechanic got addressed. However, it only got addressed because it was unnecessarily large amounts of damage bonus being added in place of a damage skill. Since Mesmers don’t have a trait giving us more damage for each shatter skill off cooldown, we won’t be getting that same mechanic addressed.

Basically, what I’m complaining about in this post is the fact that we rely so heavily on our Phantasms for dps that it’s kind of silly that our class mechanic is to get rid of them for a small, small burst.

Now, for a literal representation of how our DPS is without Phantasms (ignoring you, shatter), 100b can easily hit 30,000 damage. Imagine with that exact setup, you instead dealt 18,000 damage because a mob cleaved your banners, effectively dropping your dps. (Shhh, it doesn’t work perfectly, but that’s how weak our attacks are without Phantasms making up the difference).

I like the idea of feeding my Mawdrey with Bloodstone Dust. Now if only she automatically converted bricks down as she ate the dust…

You would need leatherworking at 500 at the very least (or armorsmithing or tailoring).

All other things can be bought or outsourced.

If, however, you want to craft everything yourself, you will need:

400 Artificing
400 Huntsman
400 Chef
400 Jewelcrafting
500 Tailor/Leather/Armor

and I may be missing something.

Keep in mind, using the LS rewards (keys), you’ll not only get a few champ bags, but also Empyreal, and Dragonite.

Then, getting Geodes will also net you Karma, Champs Bags, and Mats. Champ Bags will also get you mats.

Etc, etc, etc… a lot of the rewards bleed into each other meaning you don’t actually spend 120g due to the account-bound mats.

NinjaEd.3946:

style.6173:

The winners:
Ranger, Engi, and Guardian

The losers:
Thief

Everyone else is in the middle.

Why must the truth hurt so much!

I’d put Mesmer at the top over guardian tbh, they got a lot of nice bug fixes (could be more that hasn’t been posted yet) along with some moderate attention to their traits. I don’t agree with all of it but they did get some good attention in comparison to “everyone else” and thief.

And then they got nerfed in the Guardian/Necro Skill Bar. Woooooo~ runs around naked

warriorjrd.8695:

Esplen.3940:

Probably because people can steal or copy the 30s of Stab, which shouldn’t really happen.

Gotta be careful of dem Mimic Mesmers… sigh

Too bad I can’t steal your double endure pain or 10s of condition immunity, if only, how the tables would turn…

You realize I’m a Mesmer main, right?

I didn’t say account bound. I just said account.

Warden IE still borked. Included in patch notes, just like last feature patch.

Also, AT is better than Mimic because Mimic doesn’t remove their boons, just copies it. Only practical application of Mimic is vs Andal in HotW. Trait Mimic and spam it for 25 stacks of permanent might, then yell at your teammates when they override it by using Empower.

Double clicked on inventory.

Item was consumed.

Working as intended.

You can try to contact support, but since it’s a player error, they probably won’t fix it (also it’s an account unlock, which they don’t like to remove no matter how much you yell and scream).

Stealing endurance isn’t going to slow down a thief that much. Weakness already reduces endurance gain.

I’m not going to migrate, but this game is getting worse. Arenanet seems to be doing the ostrich approach when it comes to their game. They do what they want and nobody can say anything about it. Sure, they attempt to make some communication, but if it’s not what they want to hear, they ignore it. Also, you have to be really loud because their head is in the sand.

The main focuseseses focii… focus of GW2 Arenanet is currently e-sports (with an unbalanced, flavorless meta), PvE progression through Living Story (extremely slow, bland, re-using old content and shoving players back to old content to progress new content), and WvW Tournaments (in an attempt to keep WvW fresh and engaging, along with more World loyalty).

Of course none of this is working because…

WvW:
Megaservers are one step in the wrong direction for world loyalty. Now, I’m not saying Megaservers are bad. I love them (as long as they don’t give me 10 or less fps), but they do dilute the game and make it harder to say “I LOVE MAH WERLD”. Notice when you see those guild recruitments in town? Did they forget to include their world? Is their world not yours? Fun. At least Global Guilds will be a thing, soon, but that’s still less world loyalty for WvW.

PvE:
Fresh content in the forms of… sections of a new map. Not even a whole map, but just sections. Now, I’m not going to say that we’re not getting ANYTHING, but we’re not getting anything new. After the second patch of Dry Tops, we pretty much got everything there is in it. The third installment added a bit more, but had nothing new in comparison to the second, which was barely more than what was in the first (bar the weapon skins and continuation of Mawdrey).

Mawdrey attempts to force players all over the world to keep it fresh and engaging, which would work if all the Waypoints were borked, but.. they’re not, because Taimi (yeah, her, the PROGENY, not any of our thousands of Asura Pact Commanders or Pact Engineers or Asura Home Instance Krewe’s) was able to single-handedly stop Mordremoth from disabling them all. So people just waypoint near the area, get the item, and go back to whatever they were doing. Also Dungeon, Fractals, and fresh zones are getting no love (Dry Tops is similar to a champ train but instead it’s events for Geodes for Keys for Chests for loots). Wooo, another level 80 zone full of loot trains. It’s not like we have Karka Shell farm in Southsun, Champ Train in Frostgorge, Plinx + More Farms in Cursed Shore. Nope. We don’t have any farms, none at all, not since they nerfed Queensdale farming (which was actually a viable, cheap way of leveling up characters after the horrible trait update [horrible in relation to leveling new characters]).

PvP:
Still no matchmaking, still no new game modes, still no new maps (bar Skyhammer and Courtyard, one of which is available for Arena). Huge imbalance Skyhammer + more. Removal of water (sort of justified, but they really need to rework underwater. Additionally, PvP gets rewards that are used in PvE, instead of getting rewards useful for players in PvP. With the addition of the generic suits, it ends up nullifying the PvP only skins, unless you’re a henekitten LAkitten.

Underwater:
From the beginning this has only been an addition to land combat as opposed to being it’s own combat. The fact that about 10-30% of the game is underwater still baffles me as there are so many problems with the combat. From few finishers to lack of variety, there are problems. The fact that you can’t use all of your utilities underwater means that there are land-only utilities. So why, then, are there no underwater only utilities? Why? Because Arenanet doesn’t care about underwater anymore. They removed the underwater PvP map because of tons of underwater bugs they didn’t want to address and changes to skills. Hmmm, that sounds very healthy. Oh, and sink is fun. It likes to ignore defiance and stability.

EDIT:
This came out longer than I expected, but I can keep going. Keep in mind most of this is all my opinion and should be taken as such.

Was there a wall and were you facing it?

Sounds like one of the Revealed love changes they had last feature pack. This one is more about making underwhelming changes that somehow manage to still bend us over.

Elixir.3701:

Where does it say LS will start at level 10?

You won’t unlock the LS until level 10. I’m not sure if this is one of the tutorial options that you can bypass through the options menu, but I’m sure the story will be boosted to level 10 so you can’t just skip it.

Additionally, I hear that the key will be awarded at the level 20 quest, similar to China (no confirmation on this, so it’s just empty words unless someone can prove me right/wrong).

style.6173:

The only thing holding back GW2 from being an esport is the balance team. If they can get some new people in that group, this game has great potential. You can’t have an esport with so many under/over powered skills and then taking 5-6 months to release any balance adjustments.

Assuming everything IS balanced, 5-6 months is fine. I think Arenanet just has unrealistic views on their game.

Kicast.1459:

Esplen.3940:

Kicast.1459:

Esplen.3940:

This is funny because it’s on the big fights (where your Phantasms don’t die) that Mesmers will outshine a Guardian

Phantasms don’t die on big fights ??? What is your secret ? Tell me please…I have obviously missed something important here.

What’s your definition of a big fight?

My definition of a big fight is like…

Taidha Covington, Shadow Behemoth, Lupicus, etc.

Most of which you can have/maintain 3 Phantasms relatively easily (well, Lupicus not so much after Phase 1, but Mesmer can easily one shot him).

Ok sorry bro…I was not clear enough…I was talking about wvw. And big fights is 15 + vs 15 +

Then my secret is running Disruptor’s Sustainment…

I mean Triumphant Distortion… I think? I dunno, they’re all bad.

I agree. Other than the balance, there’s no reason for them to have held out on all the “hype-maker”. They should have just released it as another tuesday patch and seen the glorified confusion of all the people looking in wonder at the freshness of the game instead of releasing it bit by bit and having people smudge the shine off of it.

There are advantages to them giving us time for feedback, such as the Commander tags getting “fixed” and Mesmers sighs. But even those can be hotfixed, which would further reinforce that Anet reads the forums and addresses issues that are, well, issues.

Probably because people can steal or copy the 30s of Stab, which shouldn’t really happen.

Gotta be careful of dem Mimic Mesmers… sigh

kodesh.2851:

Esplen.3940:

Except it makes it impossible to roll in a phantasm build/pve.

If they make it so that it doesn’t override, then they might as well remove clone death.

Also, I don’t want to spawn clones while avoiding things in PvE. I hate going in combat more than I need to while moving from point a to point b. If I’m in the mood to kill everything I see, fine, but I don’t always want to do that.

I see…

Yes, clones aggroing random mobs is annoying and should really be fixed.

Still, you only override your oldest phantasm if you have 3 out and summon a clone. So yeah, I’d be totally fine with lazymode triple phantasm PVE builds being hurt so the rest of us can enjoy baseline DE and all the build variety that would allow.

Yes, lazymode PvE builds like dropping 3 Duelists on Abomination while you fight him melee away from your duelists so he doesn’t smack the ground and destroy them, relying only on dodges and evasion using Sword 2 to prevent yourself from overriding phantasms (thus negating 5 weapon skills 3,4,5/4,5)

Ever soloed that guy? Duelists make it a lot faster, and the cost of dropping 3 of them is 5 weapon skills.

Bearhugger.4326:

Esplen.3940:

I’m going to say what I’ve told myself since the luster of launch left me: GW2 has a ton of potential. I’m just waiting for Arenanet to bring out the diamond that it can be.

That’s what I’ve been telling myself since the beginning but I’m getting sick of waiting. Arenanet are sit on a gold mine and they let dust cover it.

The LS season 2 is the best thing that has happened to this game’s PvE since launch, but if that’s how the company wanted to expand its PvE, that should have came sortly after launch, not 1.5 years later. 2 years later the game should have at least one expansion.

I agree. I’d rather spend quality money for quality content then be shoved all this fluff for… well… just as much money.

It was cute for the first 5 months… but it’s been dragged on for almost 2 years.

Shouuuuuld.

shifts eyes I don’t trust them anymore... guess I play too much Mesmer.

Kicast.1459:

Esplen.3940:

This is funny because it’s on the big fights (where your Phantasms don’t die) that Mesmers will outshine a Guardian

Phantasms don’t die on big fights ??? What is your secret ? Tell me please…I have obviously missed something important here.

What’s your definition of a big fight?

My definition of a big fight is like…

Taidha Covington, Shadow Behemoth, Lupicus, etc.

Most of which you can have/maintain 3 Phantasms relatively easily (well, Lupicus not so much after Phase 1, but Mesmer can easily one shot him).

Yeah, I had 65 stored, and now I have about 15. Then again, I have a few thousand Quartz, so charging isn’t really a problem either (fully stocked home instance. Don’t regret the Wood or Copper/Silver/Gold nodes because free daily gathering in addition to chances at sprockets because op watchwork pick (well, not the wood, but that’s necessary for daily).

And the skill point is… useful, not that I ever use it (because it’s a hassle grabbing 25 Quartz).

Best possible outcome from Quartz Crystal Formation:
5 Quartz
1 Quartz
1 Charged Quartz Crystal
2 Watchwork Sprockets (Watchwork Pick)

For 3 strikes + 4th (or more!) strike with the same outcome. Probability is about the same as a Precursor, but hey it’s still there!

Both Rangers and Mesmers are very good in Dungeons and Fractals. While most people don’t want either of them, that doesn’t make them less good.

Rangers provide the critical counterside to Warriors banners (yes, Warriors bring Discipline and Strength Banner + Empowering Allies [maybe], but Rangers bring Spotter and Frost Spirit).

Mesmers are masters at reflects, even better than Guardians, assuming the enemy does not cleave phantasms. If the enemy does cleave phantasms, then Mesmers are utility bots in non-boon ways.

For fractals specifically, Portal has many uses against both the Molten boss and Mai. For the molten boss, you can use portals to teleport from one side to the other in case you get sandwiched in explosions or the berserker teleports on you while you’re not prepared. Additionally, slotting Medic’s Feedback can be a life-saver if you camp a dead body while attacking (try camping an NPC and not an ally, they might get mad at you for abusing their body).

Of course, there are groups that will melee the Berserker, and that’s fine, too, so don’t slot Portal willy-nilly in this fight. Ask your group beforehand what the plan is, and make sure nobody runs in like an idiot.