Guild Wars 2

I curently use on my shatter build Sigil of Fire & Air on sword/pistol for maxed burst potential and sigil of purity & energy on GS for at least a bit of condi remove and some endurance gain.

In the past, I run GS + sw/sw, now I run GS + sw/p.
The big advantage of pistol (compared to /sword) is, that it has a stun.
Vs. profession with low amount of stunbreaks or stability like necros or thieves (if u manage to hit them), there’s just a huge differnee between stuns and dazes, as stunned enemies also can’t move or dodge.

Pistol just seems like a pretty good alround weapon. It features a good CC and a reliable phantasm.

soon™

lmkklmlkm

Orrian Region track.

The skin you get for finishing as unique as amazing.
…

RedStar.4218:

Level Ioo.2497:

Most of the skins coming out of old ranked chests are skins that you can find in PvE as common white/blue/green/yellow drops. They are still available in PvP through the loot boxes from the reward chests. Just make sure you unlock the skins first before selling to merchant if you’re not salvaging them.

You could get all 3 order armor sets with only 1 character, a lot of crafting sets without needing to craft them and dungeon sets without doing the dungeons.
And let’s not forget certain armor sets that are really rare in PvE or the Tribal set.

…and you could get all of those, usable for your whole account, no need to levelup a char in order to use shoulder items and you didn’t have to pay for using unlocked skins.

At least for me:

Conquest > TDM

I’ve to admit, I haven’t been on any kind of “professional” TDM server, but as soon as a TDM server has more than 10 players on it, it sucks pretty hard.

Not to mention, that the map is so tiny, it’s just spawn → fight & kill → die → respawn → repeat.
The whole tactical component of “where to go?” from conquest is missing.

How about Runes of Hoelbrack?

I used to run them on my mes for quite a lot time.
If you don’t have any kind of condi cleansening, -25% condi duration seems pretty usefull.

Darnis.4056:

Y

Still .. afaik over 500 skins are basically gone?

Yup.

Welcome to the new GW2 sPvP sPvE.

They repalced a half-baked system with another even less well thought system.

But hey!
Now we finally (!!!) can get crafting mats!

Bonaparte.5160:

Since GW2 is here, they always said PvP is E-Sport vocation,

If “they” relates to ANet, you must be new to GW2, if you believe everything / anything ANet says.

I’m actually amazed that you managed to motivate players, but have you also found sb who would be willing to pay?
I actually think that the payments would be pretty high, as the player might use their time for doing PvE, instead of coaching.

Just remove the option to choose your team, at all.
It’s not just auto balance, it begins when the match starts and you can clearly see that all players try to stack in the team where the better palyers are.

Autoasign the players when they join the match and if they get asigned to e.g. blue, they only get the win bonus if blue wins.

Removing Auto balancing is an awfull idea, however there should be better ways to prevent forced autobalance / the abuse of it.

Bonaparte.5160:

One second my friend, you’ve never played a real competitive game ?

Like Starcraft or league of legends ? In these games there is nothing to gain either to be in the top players , yet the players fight to climb the ranks of the ladder .

Yea, I never played Lol and Co.
But the difference still is that Starcraft and Lol are Esports, while GW2 is…GW2.

I was already using Healbrak, before it was cool! :O

I liked the vid, but may I suggest you to make more use of your shatter skills?
Even though your build isn’t focused on shatter and more on phantasms, shattering helps you to finish your enemy faster.
For example in the 1st fight vs. the P/D thief, you got him stunned and he was sth like 50% HP at max. Seeing a thief this helpless is a rare situatoin. Shattering right in this moment might actually have killed him, or at least but under some serious pressure.

I think, you should also consider, to run sth else than PU.
Besides my personal issues against PU, I think you somehow waste potential by going 30pts deep into chaos in order to get PU, while only having 2 stealth skills, from which one is an elite on a rather long CD.

I think first of all you have to make sure that this website wouldn’t violate some of ANets rules.
Second, I think, nothing prevents atm from finding high ranked players and pay them for coaching you. There just is nothing like a marketplace.

Third, the system would fail, because probably nobody cares about the leaderboards. They don’t reward you with anything.

You have to ask yourself:
“What’s the value of a high rank in the leaderboards?”
And the answer is: none
There’s no prestige tied to it and you also don’t get any kind of better rewards or stuff.

If you have hundreds of gold and want to spend it on PvP, just buy some fancy PvE skins and look more faboulas than all the hardcore day 1 pvp players out there. (Thanks ANet! …)

I have to agree with everything besides the titles.
I think there are actually plenty of them, which are pvp only.

However, everything you suggested would require some dedication to pvp from the side of ANet. And that’s the problem.

Oh yea, I totally forgot how many Mesmers are in the semifinals…

And tbh, I think condis are balanced.
But even if they wouldn’t be, I’m a little egoistic and would prefer a comeback of those profs like Mesmers and eles. They weren’t in the spotlight for some month now and I would rly prefer them no to get a spot in the sunlight, instead of necro not losing his position in the meta.

Ok, my fault, didn’t read it properly enough.

But still, we also don’t see many burst specs.
And, where are my extra condi cleansens on my Mesmer?

But if it’s great comp, condis don’t need a buff?

Yea, I see how not unconventional it is.

The setup you describe would mean:
1 engi
1 necro
so, again, only 3 places left for bunkers and no thief, or just 2 bunkers and no thief.

Oh, and as a Mesmer player, plz tell me about my ridiculous amount of condi cleansening

Oh, and I’d like to mention the also pretty excessive use of burst specs, you can see when watching the NA matches. Maybe Burst also needs a buff?

Condis are only so long a counter to bunkers, as you bring more condis than your enemy is able to cleansen.
But this would mean, you might have to bring ~2 condi builds. But having to bring 2 condi builds either forces you to not bring a roamer like a thief, or to sacrifice one of your bunkers.
Hell, you might even have to bring one warrior less! o.o

I wouldn’t be that hard with conditions.

The problem is not that condis are not good, it’s just the fact that most of the teams run a lot of bunkers / defensive set ups.
This means that there’s a new space for condi specs in a team and in addition, the opposing (euqually tanky) team will have a lot of condi remove and stuff.

If you have 4 bunkers / almost bunkers in your team and expect the same for the enemy team, a thief which brings some burst/stealth rezzes/decaps might be more usefull than a necro.

Condis still are strong, but not as strong as a team full of bunkers.

You have my sword!
And bow!
And hammer!
And just all those other weapons, I don’t want to have in my inventory just because of pvp!

Zepidel.5349:

The reason why moba and shooters are so prevalent is because they are just pick up and play games, mobas you only have to dedicate 1hr at a time, shooters even less. There is no grinding involved (unless you play LoL) or attachment to a character. The time investment in an MMORPG is huge in comparison, so finding a market is a lot harder. You cant just pick up GW2 and play it for an hour or two and see even a fraction of whats going on, and the mechanics involved in hotbar combat with lots of branching trait/spec lines is much more harder to grasp than a gun loadout or managing 4 skills, and how you should interact with your team and knowing the other teams heroes and what they can do.

The first part might be true for an MMO, but it is different with the spvp part of GW2.
At least in the past you got complete access to every kind of weapons, stats and traits when you entered the mists.
The only problem might be the “big” amount of possible skill/weapon/stat/trait combos.
On the other hand, I once wanted to try out Dota, or Lol, but i got scared of the hundreads of heroes available.

Holy Devastation.8203:

Never stated it was my best game, just recorded a random game and tried my hand at video editing. Your trash talking is not needed here. If you think the video is so bad then post a better video yourself within a days time. If you can that is, rank is nothing more than countless hours spent in matches these days long as the game has been out.

I don’t think, what I did was trash talking. Ok, I admit I used somtimes words like “lol”, but most of it is just objective criticism.
If you can’t stand criticism, I think, you shouldn’t post your stuff on the internet.

The reason why I don’t make videos is pretty simple:
I don’t have anything to show off. I’m aware of the fact that I’m not the best player in the world and I don’t have any kind of “mad 1337 skillz” I could show on youtube.
Maybe you should consider this as an option, too.

You also state that it’s not one of you best games, so what exactly do you want to show with your video?
“Random PvP encounters against unexperienced players?”
I’m pretty sure, this video doesn’t even contain a single fight where your oponents where on your level of experience.
“How to defeat new players”? I don’t need a guide for that.
Or is it
“How to play PU vs. new players” Why would anybody need this? It would be interesting to see how you play against equally skilled players who how PU works and how to counter it.

I also think, I would have been less critical, if there wouldn’t be your comments on the vid like “trolling” or especially vs. the other Mesmer “he couldn’t keep up with me”.
And you think I am the one who is trash talking and thinks he is so good?
Maybe I also should make a vid like “farming rank 1 players on Hot join lolololol, look at my mad skillz”

It’s not just iMage.

Sometimes when I summon the iZerker on a running target, he somtimes is “out of range” and follows the target.

I also don’t get, why ranger pets seem to have a faster speed than my Character, so kiting them isn’t that easy, but on the other hand, we have this awfull phantasm design.

They should make it so that the Phant’s always try to stay in range, not only when they are about to use their skills.

I don’t want to be a jerk, but besides the music, everything in this vid is awfull:

1. HotJoin footage? srs? Killing some noobs who don’t even know how to find the real Mesmer doesn’t show anything
2. Capping close with 2 players while nobody keeps heading to mid
3. 1st Midfight: Even though you have had access to stuff like: distrotion, bodyblocking clones and stealth, you don’t use anything to get a savestomp. Not to mention that you didn’t even try to interrupt the 2nd enemy who was rezzing the warrior
4. 1st fight on close: “trolling” lol. You lost the point pretty fast and were some times near to death vs. a warrior who had now idea what “clones” are
5. 2nd fight on close: you even managed to let the other players cap the point
6. you also almost never made use of blink shortcuts on the

The only thing, I’d eventually consider as aceptable would be a (PvP only) nerf to the traits who buff phantasms. Why are there even 2 +15% dmg traits?
I don’t suggest this because Phants “are so super strong”, suggest this as I’m not a fan of AI-focused builds.

Buffing the F-Skills sounds good, but giving up Phant damage?
I don’t know. Loading a major part of the Mes dmg only to one source, which also is extremly obvious, hard to land and easily to evade?

I think, without ICD, the 1st one might be a little bit OP. Imagine a full shatter, dealing (in addition to the shatter) also 2 times the dmg of Halting strike (4 boons removed).

Even though I like the idea of dmg on boonremoval, I could imagine that this would make Mesmer a little bit too much a counter for guardians and eles.
I suppose a Lockdown build using shattered Enchantements would completly destroy an ele.

Inspired Enchantment looks interesting.

But I stick with my opinion, that if we want a viable Lockdown/interrupt Mesmer, there has to be a change on the initiative system, or Mesmer needs another weapon vs. thieves.

The idea is gut, except of the part where you have to pay to use it.

In addition, I think the bigger problem aren’t the unexperienced players and more the unexperienced players who don’t care about advice.

Just play some Hot Join games and before the match begins, write some stuff like:
-Only 1 player on a save node / homepoint. More players wont make it capture faster
-Don’t go for NPC on the beginning, better go mid.
-The points on the scoreboard don’t mean anything
-Fight on points, everywhere else it is useless
-Don’t zerg around, try to capture points
-Don’t go mid if their treb is shooting, try to destroy their treb

Or if you are capping a free node and another player of your team comes:
-“Plz leave, nothing to do here. / This wont make it cap faster./The points don’t matter”
etc.

And see how many players will react. The results usally are frustrating.

I know, I probably will get called an “elitist” and my post will be called “toxic”, but the bigger problem is, that a big part of the players (at least in Hot Join) are ignorant idiots.

Branden Gee.2150:

Thanks for reporting this! This looks like a scaling issue where the effect is scaling the character’s size but the skill itself is not scaling. A fix for this will require some design work so I can’t say a whole lot in regards to when it could be fixed.

While a respect this honest answer, I’m really concernd that we didn’t even get a "soon™ ".

Only self heal doesn’t make them a healer.

Even though I’m not that good in ele issues, I know that 6 points in the last line (evasive arcana) allows them to “heal on dodge”, if they are attuned to water.

For Mesmers fighting Ele, I can recommend Boonrips (e.g shattered concentration) as those make up a big part of eles defense (and offense).
Lockdown builds also work properly as ele’s cast a lot and usally have a low health pool.

Karl McLain.5604:

Some great ideas here guys! This skill is something we’ve been looking at, as it’s a little underwhelming at times.

Here’s a bunch of potential things we could do (we would do one or maybe two of these, not all:

1. Look at making it usable on the move. Currently, the animation is ONLY able to be used while standing still.
2. Increase the number of boons removed.
3. Increase the radius.
4. Make this a channeled skill that pulses AOE damage and boon removal while you hold the sword in the ground.
5. Multi-stab! You choose multiple ground targets and stab all of them simultaneously (or one-after the other). We don’t have tech for this yet… but it’s a possibility!
6. ???
7. Profit!

Tagging this thread for later.

Multi stab sounds awesome, but as you said, you don’t have the tech, yet. But while it sounds awesome, combined with a new tech, I only see another bugfest for Mesmers.

I’m actually not a fan of making it channeled. Channeling always means easy to interrupt and restricts you.
UNLESS: It becomes player aimed again and I can Minstab-channel dat freakin stealthing thief to death. While writing this, I realize how much I really, really want this.
DO. IT.

I still would prefer boosting it to boonsteal. :>

Powerr.3649:

Helseth quit right after the tournament

What? Why? :O

Zepidel.5349:

EverythingEnds.4261:

Romek.4201:

i dont think any PVPer would buy gw3^^

Sad, but true.

How about this suggestion:

Make a pvp focused GW3, but don’t let it be produced by ANet.

NC Soft is to blame, not Anet.

PvP is considered a niche, Themeparks are a lot safer. Modern MMO’s are pushing 100-300 million dollar budget, developers have less control over what gets put into a game. Everything Anet comes up with probably has to be approved by NC Soft which looks at it from a monetary side, “Is this going to increase our market share / user base?”

Hardcore PvP/PvE elements decrease market share, and is why we probably dont see any in GW2. And why WoW is adding things like LFR. The future of MMO’s seems to be watered down crap that everyone can play/stomach, but no more games targeted at a certain group of people that they will really enjoy, while others steer clear.

It’s just taking the path of least resistance, and catering to the lowest common denominator. And is why you see a lot of big name devs jumping ship to do indie projects so they can actually make the game they want, and not be forced to make the one investors want.

I know that NCSoft decides how much money they spend into GW2 and for what this money has to be used.
However, it’s not just the lack of PvP content, it is also alot about the frequency & quality of bugfixes and balance updates.
In addition, I’m pretty sure that a lot of players purchased GW2, because of its PvP.
In “common” MMOs, PvP might be more some kind of niche, but what about LoL or Dota?
I don’t play those games, but as far as I know, they are pretty successfull. Or stuff like Battlefield, CS or CoD.
None of those is a “true” MMO, the first ones are MOBAs, the second ones are shooters, but both show, that there are a lot of ppl interested in PvP. You just have to create a good environment. Not to mention that due to “every one is equal in the mists” (R.I.P since April 15th.), GW2 doesn’t feature the MMO-PvP-typical Gear advantages.

Because the bug doesn’t buff Mesmers

Did I say sth. about high level tournaments?
If I read my post, it only says “tournaments”.

Of course, you can base your view on that evil PU Mesmers that kill you in Hot Join.
Maybe you want add some complaints about how OP Moa is and how impossible it is to find the real Mesmer between his clones?
You could also base your view on the describtion of the Mesmer class on the GW2 homepage
But all of this will prevent your post of getting taken seriously.

The reward tracks in general are just bad design.
The dungeon tracks are completly independent of the difficulty a dungeon has.
The region tracks seem fairly unrewarding, especially the “unique skins”.
The tracks for all of the other skins besides dungeon skins don’t exist.

So, the Mesmer bugs were fixed within days.
This one seems to be around for quite a while.
“Balance”. lol

The probably also wont fix the bug. I mean, it’s warrior we are talking about.
The probably only will shave the bug, so that the 6th signet gives 8% less power.

Romek.4201:

i dont think any PVPer would buy gw3^^

Sad, but true.

How about this suggestion:

Make a pvp focused GW3, but don’t let it be produced by ANet.

Lifestealer.4910:

Any class is hard to master, mesmer is still forgiving and easy because you rely on AI while having a million easy ways to peel people off you.

The fact that Mesmer “relies” on AI makes shatter even harder to master, as all your AI-shatter ressources can easily be destroyed via AoEs and also make your bursts absolutly obvious, due to AI-characters running straigt to the enemy.

Please don’t base your view on Mesmers on troll specs like PU or Phantasm specs. Both of those are almost completly useless in any tournaments etc.

Kryta: Ceremonial
Shiverpeak: Etched
Ascalon: Legionnaire
Maguume: Tribal
Orr: Orrian

Moreover, you only get the skin, you don’t get an exo.

Atm, there aren’t many reasons to do the region tracks at all. Dungeon tracks seem to be much more rewarding.

Awesome!

The best one is the ranger one.

Can we make this the official one?

^
I tried to test it in the mists. (Dodge-summon 3 clones → shatter → mirror images → clones hit golem).

But since steady weapons are gone, it’s quite difficult to interpret the results.
However, just from my feeling, I’d say “post shatter” summoned illusions don’t affect the damage.
Most damage (crit) per shatter was sth about 1920, no matter if I summoned clones after wards.

Kadj.6725:

An additional point: I don’t have the data laying around anymore, but through some earlier searching I had found that someone tested Compounding. It does affect Mind Wrack, BUT. Every hit is calculated on each clone’s shatter.

What this ended up meaning is that the first clone shattered and got the full 9% boost. When the second clone shattered, it had 6% damage, and the third had only 3%.

This also means that, if your clones are shattering one at a time(I presume getting them all to fire at the same time guarantees 9% on all three), damage will be boosted by getting more clones out while the skill is playing out.

What if you use a shatter skill an summon more illusions, before the “shattered ones” have hit their targets?
Is it possible to get more than 9%?

Even though I also read the one in the Mesmer forums, I still don’t get, what your intention is.

You describe some (in your eyes) “OP-Mesmer Build”, but without posting which build you actually use.
At least, plz use something like this:
http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/

What do you expect us to do with your post?
Do you rly think, sb will come up with sth. like “oh yea! I totally no that one Mesmer build with clones and heal signet!”?

At least I find it also somehow funny, that you seem to think the difference between valkyrie and berserker amulett is healing power / vitality and completly ignore the fact that valkyrie gives a lot toughness, while berserker provides you with prezision.

Furthermore, you describe your pvp tactics which is farming the enemy on their spawnpoint, which has nothing to do with a Mesmer build. Not to mention that this tactics wont work properly, as all maps actually have 2 exits.

And plz, when you talk about Team Arena, call it “Team Arena” / “TeamQueue” / “TQueue” / “Tpvp” or sth. As “Team pvp” at least for me isn’T specific enough as every mode (besides duelling servers) needs teams.

So you play warrior, ranger and necro and say that Mesmer is easy to play with now risk/reward ratio?
Thanks for the laugh!

Let me guess, you were playing hot join and most players weren’t even able to find the real Mesmer?

I liked the original one.
You needed a target, but therefore, you didn’t need line of sight.
Especially in times of LoS abusing IS-thieves, this would be great to have back.

Alternativly:

• Blast finisher would be great (but I tink, it wont happen, as it seems, ANet wants most of the weapons only to have 2 combo skills).
• Radius increase / increase of Boon removal would also be great.

Another, in my opinion very interesting version would be to make it a boon steal in stead of a boon removal.
Especially if you manage to hit several enemies, the skill would become very strong, however with it’s small radius, it’s also hard to land on a group of ppl.

@ Advent: I’m pretty sure, LS was a boonsteal. Having a 2-boonsteal on a unblockable skill with no CD is somewhat different from Mindstab.

Lol yea, plz buff blanaced stance, since Berserker stance + Endure pain warrior (+ stability) isn’ t enough faceroll.

Also give the class, which already rly good acces to stability a stance which makes its stability unremovable.

Zepidel.5349:

Mesmer = Rock
Thief = Paper

In the current Meta, Mesmer isn’t Rock, Mesmer is more like cotton.

But the game still is Rock-Paper-Scissors.

My idea would actually be to buff Mesmer Weapon damage.
Even though it is hard to land, shatter actually does some good damage.
Buffing shatter Dmg, might get it a little it over the top.

However, buffing phantasms also seems like a bad idea, as I’m not a fan of builds getting carried to much by AI.
This leaves us with the last choice:
buff the overall Damage of Mesmer attacks.
I think, this probably would help a lot of Mesmer builds in all game types.

Even though I land a full shatter (maybe even F1 + F2), my enemy isn’t down then, my damage becomes rly low, as all of my illusions (aka dmg sources) are gone. This leaves me with no more options to put pressure on my enemy. And I cant just repeat the shatter 3s later like a BS thief.

In general, I think, Mesmer actually could need a very, very big overhaul. New players usally have hard times versus clones or Moa, but on the other side, you wont fool any experienced player.
A profession, which only shines in “destroying noobs” doesn’t make much sense.

The idea to turn illusions from NPCs straight into some kind of “ressource pool”.
Found an old post (https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/balance/Mesmer-Illusions-total-rework-necessary/first#post3790043), I made some time ago:

One way might be, to replace clones with some kind of buff. Let’s call it “PowerPoints” (not the office tool). Every skill which created a clone, instead gives the Mesmer a PowerPoint.
Other skills (especially shatter skills). Use those points for greater effects. This might be somehow similiar to the adrenalin mechanic of warriors.
Maybe you could replace phantasms with sth closer to conjured weapons or transforms. Something, you have activly to control. Or at least make some “Phantasm free” Weapons. So you don’t have to use phantasms when you don’t want.
I’d also like to mention, that Phantasms are in a lot of situations rly unflexible. They can’t follow you and they are bound to an enemy. For “utility Phantasms”, which often might just be nice to summon like P.Disenchanter, P.Defender and also I.Warden, you also need a target, which is bad.

What I would also like, would be the removal, or a reduction of the CD between the shatter skills. I know, it’s only 0.25s, but it actually happens a lot to me, that my shatter skills don’t trigger because of this.

And ofc, fixing also those bugs, which harm Mesmers, would be great.

Yup, that NPCs know where you are, even if the players have absolute no clue, sucks.