Guild Wars 2

MidoriMarch.8067:

STEALTH is thief’s mechanic not mesmer’s.

Mesmer’s mechanic is all about clones and stealth is just like a sub skill that comes with it. Which means mesmer’s stealth shouldnt be better than thief’s.

u guys are saying that going into stealth so easily without hitting cnd or hs+bp combo almost no revealed , 30+sec stealth duration stacking is not op?

btw i dueled d/p thief and i could stay in stealth forever more than d/p thief does and u guys really thinking this is normal? Lol

Oh ok, then let’s remove Poisons, Traps, Tricks, Cantrips, and Steal from Thieves, while removing Stealth from Blasting/Leaping Combos, Ranger, Engineer, and Mesmer.

I’m a genius. Well, in LFG sometimes (rarely) there are Dry Tops maps being advertised. Otherwise, you just gotta know their locations and find a rotation. Youtube has a few good videos on it.

Look for “Chest Farms” in the LFG pane, or finish Vinewrath as that spawns a guaranteed 4 chests, along with people usually hitting 2-4 shovel spots if you take the middle exit (and straight to the wall, then run to Amber).

Royale.5863:

4. All clone on death traits have been removed. There is ZERO consequence to killing a clone or a phantasm.

Actually, there’s one consequence but most people won’t trait it because it’s not worthwhile. Persisting Images will give 6s of Retal on Phants that does not refresh. I haven’t tested but it may still be possible to double-Retal via iDefender.

Just wanted to point that out.

The problem with Desperate Decoy (and the same trait on Thief lines) is that the stealth comes out when you’re not really ready for it, so you tend to get revealed almost instantly because you have damage going out as it spawns.

That happens to me as well. I don’t really care about it, though.

RoseofGilead.8907:

You can’t change the stats of exotic items at the Mystic Forge, as far as I know. And you can’t change the stats on Ascended back items or trinkets (earrings/accessories, rings, and amulets).

You’re right, however the OP was talking about fears of getting Ascended (and I assumed armor since, ya’know, the title) which is due to the stats being outdated. Ascended accessories are significantly cheaper than an armor set (especially Light) so the price is negligible. If you refuse to see it as negligible (which is a fair standing), then the price of getting new accessories is comparable to the price of stat swapping an armor or weapon, thereby reinforcing my initial point.

The exception is a backpiece and certain stat sets which are unobtainable or just a pain in the butt to get, they’re never expensive unless you choose for them to be (like making a Spinal Backpack instead of a Fractal Capacitor or Mawdrey).

champ.7021:

Esplen.3940:

bladex.9502:

Arah p1 is pretty much the most newbie-unfriendly path in the game.
I’d rather do p4 with first timers than p1

Seriously? I can braindead run P1 with PUGs just because they’re live bodies that can help rally or add slight dps (notably on locusts). I don’t do P4 because I’m lazy and it takes so long.

P1 sucks for pugs because of the lack of wp at the crystaline entities. I remember the first time i did that path with pugs -_- it was like waiting for 5 old people to cross a road one at a time.

Ah, I just solo run it and then if people die, I drop a portal since I play Mesmer. If they fail to take that portal, however… (most players don’t know how to use portals).

Every profession can solo run it, but most people don’t know how. That’s why I drop a portal if they take a while and/or can’t do it themselves yet.

I dunno, I feel like just slotting PU is pretty sacrificial on its own because if you’re running GS you probably have Dom line, which means you’ve significantly kitten the trait options you can run by picking Chaos with it. Additionally, Chaos has the Chaotic Interruption trait which, in my personal opinion, is far, far better. I never trait PU (except a quick swap-to while doing long stealth runs in PvE/Dungeons), but this is just my personal opinion.

If you think that grabbing PU is worth the losses (and makes a Mesmer significantly stronger in doing so), then that’s understandable, but I personally don’t see why.

Standard Mesmer traits will include Glamour traits, increasing the uptime of Feedback by 2s to 8s on a 32s recharge.

The actual cooldown of Feedback reflect is 24s reflection for a 72s cooldown. (8s + Mimic + 8s, actual cooldown goes off, 32s later, you get 8s of reflect, 32s later, Mimic is off cooldown). This ends up with a 0.33s uptime. Since you’re traited for Glamours, you probably also have the trait on Focus and maybe the trait on Medic’s Feedback. If an NPC is dead (or an ally goes down) you get another 8s on 32s cooldown, which you can drop at least twice during the 72s of reflection, totaling to up to 40s of reflect on a 72s cooldown, which is over 0.5 or 50% reflection. Then you add in 1x Warden (or 2x with Signet of the Ether), which eventually becomes 3x Warden (100% reflection uptime). And also Temporal Curtain which is another 5s reflection on a 20s cooldown (0.25s upkeep).

Aka, a Mesmer, in an instant, has 21s reflection upkeep (2x Feedback + TC) in addition to 2 Wardens (20s cooldown) or 3 with Signet of the Ether.

If you start with TC, you end up with 26s of reflection.

Well, we don’t know what is going to happen once HoT hits, but for now Berserker is fine (Power Precision Ferocity). If the stat ends up not being good, or you want to swap, you can now change the stats using the Mystic Forge. It’s not that expensive (as expensive as buying a set) so it’s pretty cool.

bladex.9502:

Arah p1 is pretty much the most newbie-unfriendly path in the game.
I’d rather do p4 with first timers than p1

Seriously? I can braindead run P1 with PUGs just because they’re live bodies that can help rally or add slight dps (notably on locusts). I don’t do P4 because I’m lazy and it takes so long.

Leodon.1564:

I’m a fan of sw/sw also. Only real complaint is with how clunky the block/daze mechanics works. Have the retaliatory counter hit quicker and daze travel faster and it would golden.

I kind of want the Retaliatory Strike to be like Deja Vu where you can recast whenever you want instead of it instantly recasting. This would let you choose to spawn the clone or not and potentially let it cast like a Mantra so you don’t have to interrupt yourself.

PaxTheGreatOne.9472:

• Arah 1,3,4 ( 4 , 4 , 3 ) ( lvl 80 ) (nice armor)

I recommend doing Arah 1,2,3 if you’re confident in your abilities, otherwise just do 3. I wouldn’t ever recommend 4.

Arshay Duskbrow.1306:

Stealth is a Mesmer thing, always was a Mesmer thing, and will always be a Mesmer thing.

Actually, Stealth never was a thing, other than for The Invisible Pony and the Norn Snow Leopard Spirit in the past.

However, for the entirety of GW2, thus far, your statement is correct.

zinkz.7045:

Esplen.3940:

zinkz.7045:

Daniel Handler.4816:

I’ve notice that people are saying they are being one shotted by mesmers, and this is indicative of OPness, but the full mesmer burst happens between 1-2 seconds, can people not react to this?

What do people react with when being stunned and burst, when they can be stunned for 1.25 seconds, instantly, from 1200 range, even from stealth, any time they use skill with a cast time, multiple times per minute that far exceeds stunbreakers/invurns (and that is in a 1v1, let alone that in a teamfight these stunbreakers will get used up by against other opponents), bad, broken game design is… bad and broken.

I used to have to bait dodges on my mesmer, now I just roll my face across the keyboard.

They get stunned from 1200 range, that means something is about to happen to them, so they should use their stunbreak and probably roll or use a blocking-like ability.

Do you even read what you reply to? You can trigger CS multiple times per minute between MoD & Diversion, far more times than the number of stunbreaks / instant blocks & invurns than most builds have, there is no counterplay, and that is 1v1, add in most fights are not that, and stun breaks and the few instant invurns/blocks get used up far mroe quickly in teamfights, it is even more of a joke, it is skilless and terrible game design.

CS has a 5 second cooldown, yes you can activate it multiple times per minute, but with a 5 second delay between the stuns, you’ve already given up your intent and position allowing your opponent to know what is going to come. Sure you can mindlessly spam stuns, but if they don’t interrupt, you don’t get the bonuses (and they can be dodged, although MoD might need a cast time now).

There is counterplay and simply spamming interrupts isn’t going to do the job, even if they do stun (remember fighting Hambow Warriors? They had a lot of CC, too and the CC was somewhat manageable as long as you had at least one escape ready because you knew what was coming next).

zinkz.7045:

Daniel Handler.4816:

I’ve notice that people are saying they are being one shotted by mesmers, and this is indicative of OPness, but the full mesmer burst happens between 1-2 seconds, can people not react to this?

What do people react with when being stunned and burst, when they can be stunned for 1.25 seconds, instantly, from 1200 range, even from stealth, any time they use skill with a cast time, multiple times per minute that far exceeds stunbreakers/invurns (and that is in a 1v1, let alone that in a teamfight these stunbreakers will get used up by against other opponents), bad, broken game design is… bad and broken.

I used to have to bait dodges on my mesmer, now I just roll my face across the keyboard.

They get stunned from 1200 range, that means something is about to happen to them, so they should use their stunbreak and probably roll or use a blocking-like ability.

You might want to test condition damage.

Medicarejunkie.6032:

I have been using Sw/Sw+Staff in PvE, mostly Silverwastes. So far, its my favorite weapon combo for aesthetics, practicality, and mobility for when i pug. I use staff because I like chaos storm. Its pretty and can daze interrupt, giving me quickness. Phantasmal Warlock may not be as strong as duelist, but it hits hard. And i figure it doesnt matter what ranged you use as long as you dont sit on it.

Even in SW, I find Pistol better due to it’s faster projectile speed on interrupt (and bouncing versus line … yness? Also if you trait it (sure you don’t get bleeding) it stacks very nicely with staff for interrupts (although your pistol 5 doesn’t reduce cooldown on pistol 5).

Both sigils activate independant of each other, but the mainhand one will activate first, then the offhand one (no longer matters for anything except maybe Purity + Generosity stacking).

The only exception is if you have the same sigil, in which case you’ll have “double” the chance of activation (multiplicative stacking, not additive) and the cooldowns are not independant.

Skady.5916:

Normally if you don’t want to create an instance yourself – you wait for someone to do so and take a prompt. If you attempt to go through the portal yourself – you can create your own instance and group will end up split between 2 or more instances.

If you wanna rejoin your group:
1. Use waypoint on the same map or relog to character select
2. Take prompt

It doesn’t always split the map. You can use the portal to join your party.

I thought I remembered there being transparency options there. Maybe I’m thinking about the Chat Gear. :/

Sorry, I read Alphas and misinterpreted the double stealth as normal single stealthing. Brain half off today.

Also note that the Pistol Stun is faster than the Sword Daze.

Alpha, The Pledge reduces CDR by half of what you’re listing (0.015 not 0.03).

If you want to keep it that way without resetting, allow Free Camera in the options.

BUT PYRO, YOU CAN INCREASE THE CDR FROM THE PLEDGE TO 66% FROM 33% WHILE MAINTAINING 100% STEALTH (in both instances)!!! OPNERF!!!~!!!~!!!!!oneoneone!!11!!

Get out of your wallet and click the gear symbol.

And that somehow makes his, or your, opinion less valid? OP’s point is that this event should be seen as an event, and welcomed with open arms, not shot down because it’s different.

Sure, there are going to be a ton of Golems. Maybe we’ll finally see people using Anti-Siege Traps, or we’ll see a lot of Arrow Carts to Cripple in chokepoints. Heck, Reflects will basically prevent Golems from doing the majority of their safe damage, meaning that if you drop a Reflect in a choke, the Golems either have to retreat or charge melee, which can be risky.

Not to mention, we don’t exactly know how the 100% bonus movespeed will work. If it’s a buff to all users in Golems, it probably won’t stack with Swiftness and Superspeed (I have no idea if Runes work in Golems). If they just increase the base values, then it probably will stack, but even then it doesn’t seem like it’s going to make them run around the map at super speeds, zoom hacking and the like.

I think the problem here is that all the Mesmer mains aren’t running the fabled 6/6/6/6/6 build (currently 123/123/123,123/123/123,123/123/123,123/123/123,123/123/123) which allows the usage of Decoy -> Mind Wrack -> Time Warp (traited to remove Reveal) -> Mass Invis (instant cast because of traited Time Warp) -> Mimic (traited to reset cooldown of previous 3 abilities) -> double traited DE roll (1 clone 2 Phants up no cast time) -> Mind Wrack -> Time Warp -> Mass Invis -> iZerker -> Signet of the Ether -> iZerker.

If you’re scared, just throw in a Mirror and don’t forget you can always use your back-up Mantra of Distraction (AoE map-wide interrupt), Mantra of Pain (15k nukes, oh boy!), and even use Mantra of Recovery (instant cast Signet of Courage, totally underpowered, amirite?).

And then if somehow the enemy is still alive, you just press F4 for 17 seconds of Stealth and Distortion to stomp them. Meanwhile your DPS is 15k without using any attacks (since iZerker while you stealth is op and if they hit a clone they get a ton of conditions applied to them).

Oh, did I mention that you can do all of this with a single button? The game automatically casts them all in order with no aftercast delay and instantly animation cancelling. All you have to do is sit back and watch Netflix the monitor.

And if that’s not enough, you can even equip gear that has STATS to make yourself stronger.

You could also attempt to micro your Rupture, but that’s a pain in the butt.

Fay.2357:

Duelist’s discipline is is exactly 3.3x better than phantasmal fury for stacking bleeds. No more, no less.

Except, again, when above 80% crit chance via Precision.

stachekiller.2591:

What if you could buy temporary account wide AR in exchange for an infused ring? Say +5 or +10 for the day… that doesn’t help second accounts, but at least then you can take some alts in for some fun and have a use for the plethora of infused rings you are probably using your alts to hold for you anyway.

Ascended Gear is account bound. Unless you’re running Fractals with characters below level 80 (in which case they have 0 AR), your “extra” or even current set of rings are enough.

Couldn’t you speed it up slightly by whirling into the wall and also timing your Defiance Stance with your Hundred Blades (to get the final hit off)?

With baseline IP, you can just do single illusion F1 for good damage.

How do you get to 100% CDura now?

Start with Exotic but save up for Ascended (try to get to at least high enough in your crafting professions to create the daily materials and attempt to create the daily materials) unless you don’t care about Fractals at all.

I mean, 704 (average 18 stacks from SI and 16 from DD) bonus DPS isn’t big. Actually, fixing the trait would give, on average, 352 DPS with no CD (once all 3 duelists are up).

Silverkey.2078:

There was a fairly long list of bugs for all professions, mesmers included. They would have definitely not written the description this way if they intended it not to work for iDuelist. Plus, the bleed on pistol 5 is fairly anecdotic. It was clearly meant to work for iDuelist but they just didn’t have time to fix mesmers yet (we were not very high on their priority list). Now, when they will start seeing a mesmer stack 50 bleeds on her/his own, they will definitely nerf it, so I’m only mildly optimistic about it.

This is true. 3 Duelists will maintain roughly 18 stacks of Bleed with a peak of 24 (assuming synced). They then have the possibility of getting 48 more stacks of Bleed (72 total) with an average of 16 additional stacks (38 total). Whether or not you have Condition Damage, you’re still looking at a hefty amount of damage (especially with the Chronophantasma… let’s hope they get de-synced like Robert said so it’s harder to cleanse the Bleed, huehuehue).

With 0 Condition Damage (and Might) you’re looking at 2640 damage with only Sharper Images, 7920 with 72 stacks (assuming you have the improbability of getting all procs), and an average of 4180 damage.

The DPS gain from 38 stacks is 836 with no CD or Might. Also, let’s hope they don’t add an ICD because it would be OP for us to have Bleeding on such a “short cooldown”.

Morfedel.4165:

Maxzero.4032:

Neither the Scepter nor Duelist traits have been fixed.

Wait whats wrong with the scepter trait? I havent really been using it…

Attack speed is unaffected.

selan.8354:

wait. no mesmer nerfs?no hidden nerfs? no game breaking bugs? omg, everyone RUN! the world is ending!

Wait until we find them!

Click my sig. :/

Korusef.3714:

SoI could hardly mention F5, because it does not exist (yet).
Also If I remember it correctly, F5 (return) will transport you back to your previous location so using it with movement skills might be a bit problematic.

Blink to loot or pull a lever!

You missed the point entirely.

Just because something has a higher skill ceiling than it’s counterparts does not inherently make it better than the counterparts. Mesmer has a high skill floor and a ridiculous high skill ceiling. The other professions can take advantage of the knowledge and tactics used at very, very high level Mesmer play in addition to their strengths.

Simply stating that a Mesmer is OP because Helseth is OP at Mesmer (or Misha or Frostball or whoever you want to bring up) is not entirely accurate. All that you can say for certain is that that player is good at the profession and plays well. Now, it’s possible for them to overpower their opponents, but that does not inherently mean that their profession is overpowered in relation to their opponents professions.

Let’s say that ANet releases a new Profession called the Commando. Most (if not all) people avoid the Commando and don’t play them due to playstyle tastes. However, there is a dedicated Commando community, although they aren’t very good at playing MMOs and play poorly. Tournaments come and go and in each Tournament players rarely see Commandos and the ones that do appear don’t tend to make any impact at all. Does that mean that Commandos are underpowered? Does that mean that Commandos need to get buffed?

The way I see it, if you’re bringing up people like Helseth your argument becomes null and void nearly instantly. Why? Imagine if he had dedicated himself to any other profession, like, say, a Thief. He would be just as good, if not better (in the pre-patch “meta”, hard to say meta since it would be a different meta since he wasn’t playing Mesmer).

Yes, if you’re playing a profession at near-perfection using all sorts of extreme forethought and counterplay, you’re going to succeed, even if your profession itself is not as good as others. It’s basically just counterplay. I know it’s a bit off topic, but maybe you should check out the Super Smash Bros meta and it’s volatility.

silentnight warrior.2714:

See this tread. It might help a bit.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/12k-confusion-Video-added

That thread won’t help. The videos getting 18-46 Confusion are abusing Menders who get interrupted on taking damage. Stacked Menders + AoE damage + Mistrust = all the stacks.

Offerande.5240:

Certainly great fun Solo Arah 1 or 2. it is certainly not easy. Have no idea how you will be able to doing it. Take Warrior or thief, looks the most easy

Thief is very unforgiving. If you make one mistake you go down.

I’d just like to say that you can only get 64s of stealth solo stacking (unless you’re in PvE in which case you can have infinite via Ash Legion/Order of Whisper Spy Kits). Obviously it’s not really useful to be running traited Torch, traited Manips, and Decoy, Veil, Mimic, Mass Invis.

What I do is Veil, start casting MI, run into Veil (right about when MI finishes), instantly Prestige, Mimic Decoyx2. Spam Prestige and Decoy until you pop out of stealth.

If you have Ash Legion and Order of Whisper Spy Kits, use an OoW kit right as your stealth ends to get 3s of Stealth (not Hide in Shadows). This brings your torch off cooldown so you can maintain stealth. Your other skills should be getting off cooldown, so wait on Decoy for Mimicoy. Drop a Veil, run through, Mass Invis, proceed to spam Torch Mimicoy. When the stealth is about to end, use Ash Legion Spy Kit this time, there is no timer so you have to count to 10 (you also can’t move, iirc) followed by OoW (or vice versa if you wish). Then proceed to continue Torch Decoy spam. When the stealth ends again, you can use OoW kit, then OoW + AL kit, then OoW kit, etc, etc, etc.

Also I realized while testing this that the Torch trait is actually pretty cool (if you maintain long durations of stealth) because 1.5% (0.015) of 30s is 0.45 meaning your cooldown is reduced by exactly 33% (1/3) if you have 100% stealth uptime (not that you ever really do, but I mean, shhhh) since for every 10 seconds you lose kitten so the Prestige cooldown effectively becomes (while permastealthed) 21 seconds (intervals at 1s, so you get 20 intervals reducing the cooldown by 9s and the final interval doesn’t reduce anything since it’s off).

Sorry I just wanted to play around with perma stealth. Won’t be as fun as the perma stealth bug but it’s still kinda nifty. (I really like how Prestige explodes at 6s when traited with PU, iirc it used to explode at 3 regardless of PU when PU added 1s. Maybe I’m crazy.)

It costs roughly 10g to craft one as of right now. [Source]

People say Guardian except whenever I play mine, I feel squishy as all heck.. also pretty slow. With Warrior, you have mindless attack patterns, your utilities are pretty passive and don’t contribute to the majority of a fight, and your traits can be cherry picked based on what weapons and utilities you run, making it pretty easy to figure out what traits you want based on how you play.

With Guardian, you have utilities that probably need to get swapped depending on zones, traits spread out and a lot of diversity in traits which ends up convoluting the leveling process trying to decide what path is better to take.

Keep in mind OP wants something easymode. Whether or not Warrior can survive (which they can, bar elite and champion solos as a newer player), they are definitely a lot easier to play and require less thought.