Guild Wars 2

It’ll also trigger off of the passive signet heal ticks, so it doesn’t have to be an actual activation.

DeceiverX.8361:

Server stacking is a hard problem to solve on the technical level, despite being doable. ANet’s unwilling to devote the resources needed to do so, so we get ineffective algorithms, instead.

Server stacking is not possible to solve when the community is so intent on destroying any possible solutions that Anet implements. The only way to fix stacking would be to completely stop server transfers of any kind. That would allow Anet to balance the populations appropriately. Obviously they’ll never do that because not only would that make a ton of people scream and cry about it, it would also remove their primary wvw revenue stream.

A lot of people have spent a lot of time trying to make full zerk Mesmer into a playable backline build that has an impact comparable to that of an elementalist.

A lot of people have failed.

Mesmer simply is not capable of performing in a way similar to that of an elementalist. There is no possible way to build Mesmer that will let you deal damage in any comparable fashion. Any build you use will feel completely and totally impotent compared to any elementalist backline build.

Ithilwen.1529:

To return to the topic, clone death was removed after an ANET staffer was killed by a clone death Mesmer.

You keep saying this a lot. It’s still false though. It’s amusing because this false statement seems to be the very basis of your argument for reinstating clone death builds…And it’s nothing but a falsification.

Obtena.7952:

Necro Condi has a reasonable level of condi AOE going for it. I gather that it’s simply not enough to make that difference?

Not sure what you mean, Necro condie is perfectly viable in fractals. I believe that OP was simply looking for another build to play condie on for some variety.

Edit: On a closer reading of the OP, I now see your point. Yeah, necro condie is extremely viable in T4 fractals. One could argue that condie necro is possibly the most powerful carry class in the game for T4 fractals actually. If you’re just looking for a condie build to play, look no farther than necro.

Short answer: no

Long answer: kinda. Condie Mesmer is a build you can play, but it’s exclusively single target and sacrifices the normal support utility that people expect Mesmers to bring.

The single target nature is obviously an issue for many fractal encounters. You end up utterly useless for clearing trash which actually gets dangerous in a T4. This makes you a total waste of space in aquatic ruins, uncategorized, urban battleground, cliffside, normal aetherblade, and much of volcanic.

The other issue is that groups will expect you to be providing chrono support. Condie Mesmer cannot do this, so that could be a problem for some groups. The other problem there is that the chrono support will generally add far more to a party than condie Mesmer can, so you’re better off playing that anyway.

Windwalker.7421:

Build diversity was supposed to be the key reason behind the traitline overhaul, and all we’ve seen since especially HoT has been the exact opposite of build diversity.

Yeah, that’s not how I understood it actually. I saw the traitline overhaul as a change purely designed to limit build diversity. It made the traitlines much simpler and drastically reduced the amount of potential combinations. In theory, this was supposed to make it more possible for the devs to balance things. In reality it just ended up showing how the devs are equally incapable of balancing a simple system as they are incapable of balancing a complicated system.

You’ve essentially designed a build around a concept that is awful. Well of calamity is such a bad skill in WvW that to even equip it, let alone try to quadruple cast it, is a poor choice.

The damage on the well is absolutely awful. Well of calamity has a total skill coefficient of 4.5, assuming someone is dumb enough to stand in it for the full duration. For comparison, lava font has a coefficient of 12.8. If you happen to move a bit and avoid the last pulse, the well coefficient drops to 1.5, whereas lava font is a consistent 3.2 per pulse.

The range and radius of the well are awful. The range is only 900, so you’ll find yourself unable to place it where you want it most of the time. The radius is small, so you’ll usually only clip a couple of people as they run through at best. Yes, I know lava font has a smaller radius, but it has less than half the cooldown, doesn’t take a valuable utility slot, has 1200 range, and does 3x the damage. Yes, I know necro wells are the same range and radius, but they’re both unblockable and either have a powerful effect (boon corruption) or do almost 10x as much damage.

So yeah, you’ll find nothing but disappointment with this build. You’re spending huge amounts of resources to infrequently use a skill 4 times in a row that will have a cumulative impact far smaller than a single elementalist casting meteor shower. I’ll take the elementalist any day of the week.

circuitnerd.5863:

Fay.2357:

Mesmer in GW2 resembles mesmer in GW1 in name only.

So I’m guessing none of the skills are even close to the same then?

That’s fairly accurate, yeah.

Mesmer in GW2 resembles mesmer in GW1 in name only.

Ross Biddle.2367:

• I am amazing – This is clear – We can all agree!

It is known.

adelaide.6213:

Fay.2357:

They’re pretty comparable really. Perplexity gives you some extra pressure on interrupt with the confusion while tormenting extends the duration of your normal MtD torment.

It really ends up depending on the particular build you’re facing. If they don’t have enough condie clear, tormenting runes will make MtD and the scepter block last ludicrously long. However, all that extra duration is worthless if they’re cleansing regularly. In that case, perplexity is better because it gives you a bit more spike application on interrupt.

Perplexity was reworked relatively recently. Aoe confusion on heal instead of interrupt now.

I’d go with tormenting, especially if you are using scepter, as mesmer already has 33% increased confusion duration on their illusions line.

Welp, shows how much I’ve been paying attention lately.

They’re pretty comparable really. Perplexity gives you some extra pressure on interrupt with the confusion while tormenting extends the duration of your normal MtD torment.

It really ends up depending on the particular build you’re facing. If they don’t have enough condie clear, tormenting runes will make MtD and the scepter block last ludicrously long. However, all that extra duration is worthless if they’re cleansing regularly. In that case, perplexity is better because it gives you a bit more spike application on interrupt.

I think I’ve gotten maybe 3 or 4 boxes out of 150+ boss kills. It seems to around a 10% chance of an ascended something and closer to a 2% chance of a box.

Ross Biddle.2367:

For those wondering (because you’ve been stuck in the land of condi chrono weapon loadout rotational spam XD )- The tightening of the after cast is very noticeable and the GS AA is greatly improved.

That said, Imagined Burden: It’s most appealing feature is the 20% reduction on skills. Unfortunately this has no synergy with the GS main function in a power build, which is to combo burst your GS 2, 3, and F1. Why? Because reducing the weapon CD’s doesn’t include Mind Wrack, throwing the additional use of your GS2 and 3 out of timing should you use them closer to when they come off CD.

If you want to talk might stacking, that requires GS AA’ing, which isnt always a productive use of your time. It can also incur unwanted attention, and doesn’t synergize with stealth use (used for defense and repositioning much of the time). You could look to your clones to do the job, but GS clones arent spawned in favorable positions thanks to how GS 2 functions. And who’s running DE anymore?

Imagined Burden is also lacking vs Power Block and Mental Anguish. Despite the difficulties, they still offer superior performance. They both just require more skill to make use of, that’s all.

Now, you could talk an entire build redesign to get the most out of it. But what that build looks like, and how it will perform remains to be seen!

Then add to that the fact that power mesmer in any form is woefully inadequate in the current PvP meta. It’s weak (as always) to thieves, but it’s also extremely weak to condie berserker, power revenant, and dragonhunter. Power mesmer enjoys extremely few favorable matchups and you generally just end up doing the job of a thief with worse mobility and less evasive capabilities.

Ithilwen.1529:

Phantasm, PU and Shatter were all designed with the use of clone death traits. Removing that synergy had far reaching effects.

Ok, look…they really weren’t. Like really, not at all. You need to stop confusing people about this.

Firstly, phantasms didn’t even function with most of the clone-death traits. The confusion on death trait worked with them, but most clone-death builds didn’t take that anyway. The primary cripple and bleed/weakness/vuln traits didn’t function at all with phantasms.

Additionally, shatter builds were mutually exclusive with clone-death traits. Not only did powerful shatter traits conflict with the clone-death traits, a successful shatter did not trigger clone-death traits. This meant that if you were playing shatter properly, your clone death traits would never activate.

Lastly, PU has absolutely nothing to do with clone-death traits and it makes zero sense as to how you’re claiming that it somehow had ‘far reaching effects’ on PU. PU is simply a powerful defensive tool that was used in shatter builds, in phantasm builds, and in clone-death builds. People used (and still use) PU because it’s a fantastic way to get more defense out of our skills. It had nothing to do with clone death traits.

So to recap: You’re wrong AND you’ve been willfully repeating this misinformation every time you make a thread trying to push this idea. I think most of us would appreciate if you stopped.

Romgaard.1965:

Getting around 50% win rating, does that mean that im stuck in bronce forever?
If so, that sounds a lot like the system they have in India called “caste”….

And here in a competitive ladder we call that ‘ending up at the appropriate skill level’. If you’re winning 50% of your games, it means you’re stuck in bronze forever because you’re not good enough to go anywhere else.

Straegen.2938:

Nuzt.7894:

They did it because with a couple thieves/mesmers it was completely possible to get inside the spawn and start the literal spawn camping.

Actually no since players in spawn and behind that invisible line are invulnerable. They probably got a lot of reports of “hacking” though.

I believe you could kill the shop npcs. That’s all though.

Fluffy.1932:

How do you cleave down adds with the wall tactic? In my experience the difficulty of the fight is directly proportional to how many adds there are. Being along the wall would make it much more difficult to kill adds.

You can have the slubling eat slightly towards the middle after the second and 4th shrooms. That puts all the adds within easy pull and aoe range.

Just like the last 6 times you posted this, no. Just like the last times, you stating that clone death helped shatter and phantasm builds doesn’t make that statement true at all. This would still be an awful idea.

As always when this topic comes up…

Macros are not allowed in GW2. However, a pvp player using Macros will be far easier to beat than a good player not using macros. Macros provide absolutely no advantage in PvP, only locked in rotations easily exploited by a good player.

OriOri.8724:

Windwalker.7421:

Not sure about AA, but I never understood why #2 got a huge damage buff in PvE and nothing for PvP. I can’t recall anyone ever thinking BF did too much damage for the fact that it roots you in place to do it, and it takes quite a while and 8 hits to apply. We all know that Retaliation has a bad habit of out damaging (or close) BFs own damage.

It doesn’t have to be 100 Blades with a 2.5s Blur, that’s not what I mean, but it sure could use a solid boost in damage IMO. It should also hit 5 targets, what is up with the 3 target limit? Seems outdated and unnecessary to me. This would help Power builds a tiny bit.

However, I agree that I’d much rather see boosts to more underused weapons, which MH Sword simply is not. (And mainly for it’s pretty significant defense.)

It wasn’t buffed in PvP because mesmers are already too OP in PvP /s

There really wasn’t a good reason to not buff it in PvP as well

Blurred frenzy is a 2.5s evade that simultaneously deals damage roughly equivalent to autoattacking and is on a fairly short and traitable cooldown.

That’s quite a lot of stuff it does. What exactly do you have as justification for it doing more damage? HB is slower and has no defense. Pistol whip has an activation time where it can be interrupted, and unrelenting assault deals drastically lower damage to multiple targets. Why should blurred frenzy deal more damage than it already does?

Opopanax.1803:

I think maybe my issue with mesmer sword is the playstyle. The idea of a melee weapon that yo yos you in and out of melee combat range is just horrible for time on target. Maybe this is coming from playing other classes where sword actually works well, and they have the sustain that supports time on target, but mesmer MH sword is the worst of all of the sword classes, imo.

No, I dont think 2 or 3 do a good job at all compared to other sword classes skills. You have a self root that is melee ranged (guardians also roots, but at least it is 600 range!), and you have a unreliable cripple/immobilize that that has a tendency to put you away from your target not on it.

If you’re trying to just stick to a target in melee range and dps them down, you’re going to have a bad time. Mesmer simply does not work that way. The class is designed for burst damage, not sustained. I can certainly understand frustration if you’re attempting to play mesmer in that way, but there will never be a solution for you other than playing a different class. You’re trying to hammer nails with a pair of scissors, its not going to work.

I have to chuckle when people worry about some sort of big rework making sword into a condie weapon or things like that. Never in a million years will anything like that happen, anet would never put the time and effort into something like that.

In any case…

@Opopanax: you seem to have strong ability for correlating themes on other classes swords, but you need a bit of practice for our own. You complain that other classes have the ability to stay on target. Did you fail to notice the cripple + immob + gap closer on a low cooldown that is sword skill 3? Honestly, I have no idea where any of your complaints are coming from. You don’t consider a stationary defensive skill defensive? Quite picky about your defensive options aren’t you? How much do you want a single skill to do, honestly. It’s a low cooldown, long duration, defensive skill that also does good damage. Do you want it to shout out encouraging words while using it too?

Takashiro.8701:

I’d love them to remove that aswell, however.. On the wiki page this is not listed as bug, only as anomaly. Meaning while it works different from other phantasm summoning skills, this is probably intended?

Wiki is player-maintained, so don’t take what it says as law. It definitely is an anomaly, that doesn’t mean it isn’t also a bug.

Hlord.5940:

Fay.2357:

Hlord.5940:

speaking of bug, what about Restorative Illusions? it still said “Conditions Removed: 1”

?

Conditions, plural, not Condition.
The old one, before the merge with healing, it was remove a condition per clone and no heal so it was ok to use conditions.
Spelling mistake? I hope so or is it a “bug” like the mantra recharge?

I think getting uppity about the plural construction of a word when the quantity is spelled out explicitly is beyond absurd.

Edit: Besides, it’s not even grammatically incorrect. Let me rephrase it: “The number of conditions this skill removes is 1.” Using the singular in this way “The number of condition this skill removes is 1” is obviously incorrect.

Hlord.5940:

speaking of bug, what about Restorative Illusions? it still said “Conditions Removed: 1”

?

Richard Marcinko.5132:

What would you suggest Fay? And please don’t day metabattle…..

For raids/instanced content? Metabattle!

But actually, check out the QT mesmer guides. They’ve got multiple variations of solid mesmer builds for challenging PvE content.

For WvW, the answer is a bit less simple. When you say you run with a group, what do you mean? Are we talking an organized group? A bunch of pugs following a tag? 15 people, 20 people, map queue blob?I’ll need some specifics to give you appropriate advice.

I guess it’ll work for AB if only because AB is about the mechanics of each side and less about actually having a useful build. I’d kick you instantly from any sort of instanced content other than dungeons though, the build is patently useless.

For WvW group play, you’re contributing literally nothing. You don’t have any usable cc, so nobody is gonna stand there and eat your burst. You’ll be able to pick off random pugs I guess, but that’s hardly a worthy contribution.

apharma.3741:

Well if that’s an invitation for questions Pyro I have a few.

Oy

apharma.3741:

Are you back to playing guild wars 2 on a more regular basis?

I play GW2 extremely regularly: 2 hours friday, saturday, sunday and monday. Fri/sat are my PvE raid days, and sun/mon are my WvW raid days.

apharma.3741:

Do you think we have too many cool down reduction traits that can be stacked?

The only cdr traits that can be “stacked” are illusionist’s celerity combined with the weapon-specific trait for illusion skills on said weapon. Back when the staff trait wasn’t utter garbage, this actually got pretty ridiculously low cooldowns for phase retreat, but nothing really gets low enough to stand out anymore.

apharma.3741:

How would you improve mesmer? Doesn’t matter how big a change, just how would you ideally?

So the biggest common complaint is our lack of damage. This is true both on a spreadsheet level (theoretical single target output) and a realistic level (being unable to do acceptable damage because of mechanical concerns).

The spreadsheet damage problem is harder to solve due to the basic mechanics of the class being more appropriate for burst damage than sustained dps. However, the realistic dps problem is very solvable with the introduction/modification of a couple mechanics.

First, we need our illusions to persist after their target dies for ~5s. This allows for the second mechanic to work, which is a low cooldown utility that allows us to retarget illusions (think ~10s cooldown). In this way, you’re able to set up your damage over time, and then chain it from mob to mob, or pack to pack if you’re close enough. This would also work in situations like charged souls on gorseval or statue thingies on KC.

apharma.3741:

I’d ask how you think the future of mesmer is but I have 10g on bleak.

The future of mesmer? Idk, it’ll be fine I’m sure. Chrono pretty much cements us into having a spot in PvE compositions, and we’ll always be usable in PvP due to the gimmicks we have.

Azukas.1426:

apharma.3741:

Azukas.1426:

Hot Boy is actually right to some degree in regards to phase retreat. You can use it while stunned and it’s on a 10 second CD. We shouldn’t be able to use it while stunned since it isn’t technically a stun break.

There was another weapon skill like this that was nerfed. The thief #2 sword skill. They put a cast time on it…..now going by that Hot Boy is right.

I personally wouldn’t want to see a cast time put on the skill but not be able to use it while stunned/dazed/etc.

There’s a difference though, phase retreat has a cool down of 10s while infiltrators return has a low cost of 2 ini especially when the majority of the weapon set is auto attack for damage. Return also has a 1200 range on the teleport which means you can be completely out of harms way while phase retreat is what 600?

If infiltrators return was instant cast sword Daredevil would be nearly unkillable between bandits defence, infiltrators return and unhindered combatant.

That’s the way all thief skills,work so that argument doesn’t work.

I’m just playing Devils advocate because his point is correct on phase retreat. Anet should remove the ability for it to be used while stun/dazedimmob/ectopic.

I’m not getting into the rest of it

Well, the primary difference is that infiltrators return allowed you to completely remove yourself from the current combat situation. Phase retreat is a short-range repositioning tool. It can get you out of something like hundred blades, but it doesn’t totally disengage you from the fight.

loseridoit.2756:

Fay.2357:

loseridoit.2756:

Fay.2357:

lmao this thread exploded into the ‘Yeah, I have no idea what I’m talking about, but I’m going to talk about it anyway and I don’t care what you guys think because this is for the devs that will literally never read this.’

k.

at least tell him why he is wrong.

Eh, the reasons for his being wrong have been explained quite a few times already by the time you get to my comment. I’m just chuckling about it.

from the looks of the thread, no one is telling him how this game is design around.

I prefer a type of learning called learning off the cliff. If you give an idea, you keep learning something new passively.

It is apparent that the OP needs to understand on why things exist rather than a simple tooltip fact.

The reason nobody is trying to provide more useful explanations is that this isn’t the first time we’ve been through this song and dance with op. They make an illogical suggestion backed by a total lack of knowledge and experience. Then, when the inconsistencies are pointed out, they immediately get hostile and defensive with statements like ‘none of you matter, this is for the devs to decide.’

We’re all pretty tired of it at this point. I for one am not going to waste my breath on this person’s absurd suggestions unless someone else would like me to explain more.

loseridoit.2756:

Fay.2357:

lmao this thread exploded into the ‘Yeah, I have no idea what I’m talking about, but I’m going to talk about it anyway and I don’t care what you guys think because this is for the devs that will literally never read this.’

k.

at least tell him why he is wrong.

Eh, the reasons for his being wrong have been explained quite a few times already by the time you get to my comment. I’m just chuckling about it.

lmao this thread exploded into the ‘Yeah, I have no idea what I’m talking about, but I’m going to talk about it anyway and I don’t care what you guys think because this is for the devs that will literally never read this.’

k.

Maybe he forgot that iSwap doesn’t break stuns anymore since they changed it like…2 years ago?

Man you really put a lot of effort into these. I really hate to rain on your parade, but you should know that it’s exceedingly unlikely for anet to take any of the ideas or suggestions you’ve laid out here.

Razor.9872:

Isoa.3284:

Ohoni.6057:

Evan Lesh.3295:

Not enough full parties play to keep an entirely separate 5-man queue healthy 24/7. However, that doesn’t mean teams shouldn’t have a structured place to participate in PvP. This will be part of the the discussion around the followup poll regarding solo/duo queue.

I was thinking about this when watching some discussion of another game, but what about having a more concentrated time period for this? Have a “hot time” of sorts, a couple hours per day (or week) where this mode is available, or at the very least would offer significantly better rewards.

Just pick the time that your metrics indicate most players play anyway, and make the 5v5 queues only available during that time, concentrating players there. It sucks for players that can’t play during that time block, obviously, but if they can’t have a reasonable play period outside that block then it isn’t really hurting them much anyway.

You want the ascended armor because its a new set of skins!

Could you guys PLEASE stop putting exclusive skins behind PvP. It is really onerous for us players that would prefer to not PvP. I don’t know how difficult it will be to acquire these new skins or if I’d even really want them, but I don’t want to go through the hell of earning The Ascension again. Please just let players who don’t want to PvP, not play PvP, without missing out on cool stuff.

Are you seriously complaining about rewards of game mode, that you cant get because you dont play that gamemode? How about raids, Alot of people dont have time or the group for them so they automatically miss the rewards, so should we take all the rewards away from hardcore raiders? There absolutely needs to be gamemode specific rewards, that keeps the intrest towards the mode healthy from majority of player base.

Back when Raids were first being introduced, Ohoni made threads urging for (correct me if I’m incorrect) “reward equality.” Things such as raid-only Legendary armor and the raid-exclusive skins were abhorrent to his/her vision for the game. (S)He has taken roughly the same position with other specific-requirement skins such as the legendary backpieces. It’s just what (s)he believes in.

Quite so. Essentially, their argument boils down to ‘I should be able to get every reward in the game by pressing one in an open world champion train .’ I would advise against wasting breath on that argument.

Invincible is a PvP or WvW concept. Due to the nature of fights against other players, some damage is unavoidable. This means that toughness and other defensive stats have a real purpose. In PvE, however, that is not the case. You can avoid all damage through skilled use of defensive abilities and positioning, making defensive stats nothing but a waste of space on your gear.

However, this is, of course, a personal decision for you to make about how you gear your character…until you enter a raid party. At that point, the other members are depending on you to be a competent player in order to successfully complete the content. As a chronomancer in raids, your role is to provide permanent uptime on quickness for your subsquad. This requires a substantial investment into boon duration either in gear stats, runes and sigils, or both. If you accomplish that and still want to boost your toughness without compromising the buff aspect of the build, feel free. Neglecting your role in the party to become an unnecessarily tanky bruiser, however, will result in nothing but kicks from groups.

Disclaimer: I have very large hands

Weapon swap: ~
Weapon skills: 12345
Heal/util/elite: qertx
Strafe left/right: z/c
Shatters: ctrl+12345
About Face: g
Dodge: shift
Call/take Target: ctrl+T / alt+T
Squad Markers: alt+1234567
Squad Markers on target: alt+shift+1234567

But why? Literally the only situation where an illusion gets an aura and you don’t is the swordsman after the initial leap. That would be utter garbage trait.

Uhm…how about no.

Basic tanking is basically good. Second chrono build, just drop the 2 pieces of commanders, use an exotic backpiece, and put a platinum doubloon into it. That sets you right at 97% on swap.

The heavy tanking build is just flat out silly though. There’s literally no possible reason to run that sort of setup unless you’re doing a 3-man kill or something like that. Even if you eat every single one of xera’s slashes without mitigating them (which means you’re really bad), your druids will still scrape you off the floor quick enough in normal commander’s gear.

Inoki.6048:

wwDefuser.2056:

And the Fact about the colors is only the fail for colorblind people (red and green). I think there is only League of Legends that supports a colorblind-option yet.

my apologies, I somehow totally forgot about this…

you’re absolutely right and this needs to be adjusted for colour blind people as well.

Unfortunately, this is just the latest in a long list of things that make GW2 miserable for colorblind people. They really need to do a full pass on colors in all aspects of the game to make a colorblind mode option available.

Beautilation.7915:

Fay.2357:

I haven’t really spent a lot of time running around honestly. I mainly do PvE raids and WvW raids now, so I have permanent swiftness regardless

shouldnt you be busy replying to my PM’s?

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0d6yBHDvKUw

I haven’t really spent a lot of time running around honestly. I mainly do PvE raids and WvW raids now, so I have permanent swiftness regardless

Looks like the folks here lost their sense of humor somewhere…

Commander’s gear works well, you just need to be aware that a full set will guarantee you the tanking position in every raid group. If you’re OK with this, then that’s fine, but it means you need to really know what you’re doing and be very comfortable and familiar with the raids. Nobody wants to have a tank join the group and then completely screw everything up.

If you’re actually intending on soloing dungeons, you’ll need to use specific builds tailored to each fight. We can help you pick those, but that’s a significantly more detailed discussion.

For normal dungeon running…honestly just about anything will work due to how easy dungeons are these days. However, teams will expect you to run a proper buffing build for quickness and alacrity support to the party. This becomes particularly important if you want to start doing fractals, as those get to be significantly more challenging than normal dungeons.

I’ve edited in some notes about alternative gearing selections with the sigil of draining and using wanderer’s gear instead of commander’s.

MoD vs SoD is definitely the risk vs reward choice that this build is based around. If you smack somebody that happens to have a stunbreak available, you get nothing from a fairly substantial cooldown. On the other hand, 3.9 seconds is plenty of time to leisurely kill just about anyone if they don’t break out of it. MoD doesn’t run the same risk of blowing that long cooldown, but it also doesn’t carry nearly as much potential for unloading on someone.