Guild Wars 2

Ele should be able to power through pretty much everything with zero difficulties, especially in zerk gear…

In any case, it would be nice, but I doubt solo open world PvE performance is high on Anet’s list of priorities for things to fix with a specialization, and rightly so. There’s other more important things for them to focus on.

apharma.3741:

Conditions are cleansed on a first in last out way so if 10 stacks of confusion were put on you, then 4 others, you’d have to cleanse the 4 before you hit the confusion. Sometimes waiting out some stacks to cleanse a higher and more lethal stack is needed.

This is not correct. Condition cleansing priority seems to be fairly random with a tendency towards stack size, not FILO.

Depends on what you mean by “ranged”. Staff is best used at under ~600 range because that’s the range of the bounce. Farther than that and it’s much less effective.

ionix.9054:

apharma.3741:

Well considering power shatter isn’t really meta by anyone who has a clue how to play mesmer, could you post your build so people can see what you’re currently using?

http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Mesmer_-_Burst_Shatter

Wow that is an old build, haha. That’s outdated by like a year and a half now.

There’s a reason why nobody uses power shatter anymore. You’ve just encountered it.

To deal with conditions, you need to trait inspiration for shattered conditions. You could alternatively dedicate multiple utilities to it, but then you’re sacrificing other things.

NICENIKESHOE.7128:

Keep in mind League system, by principle, is not design for players to progress indefinitely, despite how much they want to sugarcoat it.

Incorrect. The league system shouldn’t be designed for players to progress indefinitely. However, it is. A player with a 50% winrate is guaranteed to make progress. In fact, a player with a 43% winrate is guaranteed to make progress, even through ruby and diamond. It may be slow progress, but it will be progress. This means that even at equilibrium of win/loss, you still make progress. This totally borks some of the other systems they have in place, and is honestly a pretty big problem if you ask me.

Yep.

/15char

Ithilwen.1529:

You stated that “if you lose all the time you deserve nothing.” Well, people play for rewards, including the intangible rewards that come from winning a match.

This is certainly true.

Ithilwen.1529:

If there are no rewards, people won’t show up. Many people will simply cut there losses and move on if a game is made unpleasant.

This is also true.

Ithilwen.1529:

The whole point of a matchmaking system is to ensure that the little league doesn’t face MLB teams. At this time… pvp matchmaking doesn’t seem to be doing that.

This is not entirely true, and worth discussing.

The matchmaking works with what it has. It will not match you with someone greater than a certain threshold away. This means that a ruby can’t be matched with an emerald, and a sapphire can’t be matched with a diamond or legendary. However, if there is a significant variance of skill within that matching threshold, you’ll end up seeing unbalanced games anyway, and this is not only ok, but it is required for this to work at all.

The whole point of a competitive league system is that stronger players move to higher leagues while weaker players stay in lower ones. The only way to accomplish this is by matching from the available pool of players, putting sometimes stronger players against sometimes weaker players, and seeing who wins. As the stronger players beat the weaker players, they eventually move out of the matching threshold and stop facing those weaker players. As time goes on, the leagues should even out and provide better matches.

Ithilwen.1529:

Based on last season, it’s never going to “level out” either. There were the same badly unbalanced matches up to the very last day.

So now we come to the issues with the system. The first issue is population. There simply aren’t enough people to reach a perfect equilibrium of skill levels. No matter what happens, your matching threshold will contain significant skill differences simply because there are so few people playing PvP, and this is not something the matchmaking can fix. It’s like giving someone a bag with 10 marbles, each a different color, and telling them to dig out 4 yellow ones. It’s simply an impossible task.

The other, and actually bigger, issue …is that players of this game demand progression. In league of legends, a 50% win rate will not cause you to progress. It will leave you at your current level in their leagues because a 50% winrate signifies that you’ve been properly placed with others of your skill level.

In GW2… a 50% winrate will guarantee that you make progress through the divisions. This has been done on purpose by Anet because GW2 players demand progression. Even if the matchmaking functioned perfectly and matched everyone with perfect skill level players, the fact that 50% winrate causes progression would result in the weaker players eventually catching up to those above them.

So. Is the implementation of these leagues perfect? No, it’s not…but expecting the matchmaking to somehow produce balanced matches with a tiny PvP population while simultaneously demanding rewards and league progression even at a 50% equilibrium is asking the PvP team to do the impossible. Ultimately, the sort of implementation we have right now is as good as it’s going to get, and even is incredibly generous to folks. You can still make progress with only a 43% winrate, you don’t even have to hit 50%! So ultimately…if you can’t manage to win 43% of the time no, you don’t deserve rewards and progression, and it’s these same people demanding that Anet provide them with rewards and progression that are the very cause of the problem they hate so much.

Are you talking HoT or non-HoT?

Eater of Peeps.9062:

My 100+ game losing streak was not my fault. It was certainly not 100% my fault and u r rude and clueless to say it and u owe me personally an apology because I have experienced mmr hell and I am not a bad player and it was not my fault that I lost more than 100 games in a row. Stop misleading players with ur random misrepresentations.

Words fail me.

Deborah.7248:

“a 50% winrate guarantees progression”

This is false. The key to progressing is purely in how you win, not some magical winrate %.

3 examples:
Person A: W, L, W, L, W, L, W, W, L, L, W, L, etc 50% winrate 0 pip gain
Person B: W, W, W, L, L, L, W, W, W, L, L, L, etc 50% winrate 2 pip gain
Person C: W, W, W, L, L, L, L, W, W, W, L, L, L, L, 43% winrate 1 pip gain

B and C can hit legendary by repeating the pattern thru sheer number of games, while A cannot despite being better than C and equal to B.

I know it’s unrealistic to expect these 3 patterns to repeat with no deviation but the point remains. Basically if you can not abuse the double pip gain one way or another you can not advance with ‘just’ a 50% winrate. If you can win 3 matches in a row and have a winrate above 43% you deserve to be in legendary. The only limiting factor is number of games played to hit the necessary combo of double pip gains to pull it off.

Your own analysis proves my point. The very worst case scenario for any given group of equal wins and losses results in a zero pip gain. Any deviation from that worst case scenario results in positive pip gain.

Yes, there is a non-zero chance that someone could hit that perfect worst case scenario. There’s also a non-zero chance that the atoms composing my body will teleport to the next room due to quantum tunneling effects. Both of these situations have probabilities that are close enough to zero to count them as zero.

Xanctus The Dragonslayer.2318:

Fay.2357:

StickerHappy.8052:

Fay.2357:

StickerHappy.8052:

Fay.2357:

Statistically speaking, having bad players in the PvP pool is beneficial to you, if you’re a good player. Since you, as a good player, are on your team, you can only have a maximum of 4 other players that are awful. However, the other team can have 5. Over time, this gives you a statistical advantage over the other team you are truly a good player.

Do I get dumb people on my team? Sure, I got somebody that tried to res my clones repeatedly…but then you also see people this dumb on the other team too. The system isn’t targeting you to get placed with all the stupid people, it doesn’t hold some sort of grudge. On average, the other team will be just as dumb as yours. If you are able to raise the average skill level of your team, you will have a better than average win rate.

Additionally, a good and smart player can have an unbalanced effect on a match. Instead of just moaning about how your team rotates poorly, change how you play so that it complements the way the rest of your team is acting. As the only intelligent member on the team, it’s up to you to effectively analyze the game and determine how you need to play to best win.

On top of all of that, a 50% win rate is enough to progress even through ruby and diamond. 3 losses followed by 3 wins is a net gain of 2 pips. Therefor, even if you’re convinced that the system is forcing you to a 50% winrate, you still are able to make progress through the leagues.

Tl;dr: If you’re actually as good a player as you think you are, you’ll win a majority of the time anyway, regardless of the teams you get. If you’re still continuously losing, maybe you need to start thinking about blaming yourself instead of just the rest of your team.

Sure. Fair points. I completely understand.

These are all true assuming the bad players are not worse than the bad players on the other team. Had this happen to me before haha.

Also what you said is also true atleast until ruby because you cannot lose tiers. Now with ruby, one unlucky streak you have with roll of players you have might be more detrimental for you.

I mean it’s still about luck getting atleast better members on your team relative to the other team.

But again that luck is not getting any better without a decent player population that is big enough to atleast mitigate those horrid pvp experiences.

Also in regards to what you said, it still requires the perfect class for the job, I think even if you are better than your teammates, you will not keep them alive indefinitely if they die most the time in a team fight. you can’t bunker a point all game either.

It’s not about luck, it’s about averages. Over time, you’ll have just as many awful players with you as you will see against you. Over time, it balanced out. In any given match it won’t be perfectly even, but over 100 matches it will be very very close.

As I said, the system doesn’t hold a grudge against you. It’s not purposefully matching you with the worst players every time. Sometimes you’ll get worse ones, sometimes you’ll get better ones, and over time this all comes out to the average. If you, as a good player, are able to shift your team’s average higher, then you’ll win more.

Additionally, 50% winrate will get you through ruby and diamond, as I already said. Winning and losing the exact same amount of games will result in a positive pip amount 100% of the time. If you lose 3 or more, the next win gets you 2 pips instead of 1. If you win 3 or more, each win will give 2 pips. However, it is impossible to lose more than 1 pip at a time. This means that random variation in win and loss streaks will always result in a net gain of pips, allowing you to progress.

So the only downside here is to wait for the system to average out, which as you said might be atleast ~100 games, which is really putting super casual people at a disadvantage?

Of course me myself do not have any problem with the system at all, as you’ve said it does not really purposely punish you.

That was the point of my post, I think its not even the matchmaking system, it just does it job (50% win ratio, matching opponents) but the only thing that makes the result so different than its intention is that the awful/average player population is so big that the Matchmaker gets its variables from this pool hence you get these bad experiences on the forums.

Strictly speaking it puts super casual people at a disadvantage…but someone playing that little couldn’t hit legendary even with 100% winrate, so it’s not really relevant.

Most of the complaints you see here are from people who have played many games and are still stuck with no progress. You see the same themes over and over, ‘oh I always get bad teams, oh they don’t know how to rotate, oh I’m so much better than these people’.

No. If these people complaining actually were better, if they actually were skilled and intelligent, they wouldn’t have a 35% win rate across 150 matches. This is simply a case of self-delusion, people convinced that they’re great players when the reality is entirely different. That’s all.

I’d instead say that those people that were better then those ’’scrub’’s are actually just slightly better. The thing is I wouldn’t all throw it on self delusion. Because certain mistakes are really just horrible. I think sticklerhappy and you are both right. The thing is people that complain overestimate themselves in thier skill level to a point that they are vastly better then thier teammates. While the difference could be that they are simply not stupid enough tripple cap home. Or skilled enough to not get wiped instantly.

I think that a problem would be that the ‘’average people’’ are not skilled enough to carry the ‘’baddies.’’ Hence u see close matches but them still having a very long losing streak. this kinda eliminates the ability to carry and kinda depents on which team makes the less mistakes. Because no matter how bad your team u will Always have 1 in a 3rd chance of meeting a team better equal or worse then you. I believe in that cases matches are more depent on chance then MM.

However if u were to match somewhat good players with average people going by sticklerhappy’s example. U will see wins but the gap isn’t that incredibly wide.

I think the bigger problem is.

Within that 80 percent of average/bad and newer people.

The average are simply not good enough to carry the bad and new people.

If u have 2 teams.

team 1 Team 2

5(average) 4(bad)
4(bad) 4(bad)
4(bad) 4(bad)
4(bad) 4(bad)
3(new) 4(bad

average team mmr on both teams = 4

U will see that the influence of the average player is simply not enough to make a big difference. ‘’Often those threads start with. I’m not considering myself a good or pro player but average or slightly above averge or decent’’ with them often having played between 1 and 2 k games. By that time u can prolly give them the benefit of the doubt and consider them good enough to know the bare basics and not tripple cap or get insta wiped on mid.

I think the solution would be to not just attract more people. But bridge the gap between players who are average, bad and new. By actually expanding on a turtorial area. Have it actually simulate a match. And add several tiers of turtorial levels with varriying difficulties.

And for crying out loud. Update all the battle npc’s in heart of the mists with elite specialisations. So that new and bad players actually get to learn basic skills. Like to not stand in traps,

The thing is. U can only go to the tutorial area once. Heck I’m not even sure there is even a tutorial area atm.

So in short

>update the battle npc’s with elite specs

>Make tutorial repeatable and add several simulations of an practice match.

I believe if more people are average then the burden of carrying will be lessend.

You missed an important point though. Go back and take a look at my analysis as to why a 50% winrate guarantees progression 100% of the time.

Due to that fact, your analysis is wrong. These people don’t come complaining that they’re progressing slowly, they’re complaining that they’re not progressing at all, even in tier-locked divisions like sapphire and emerald.

In order to not progress at all, you actually have to be substantially worse than the average. You have to lose most of your games. These people complaining aren’t just ‘a bit better than average’ as you’re hypothesizing, they’re actually far worse than average.

StickerHappy.8052:

Fay.2357:

StickerHappy.8052:

Fay.2357:

Statistically speaking, having bad players in the PvP pool is beneficial to you, if you’re a good player. Since you, as a good player, are on your team, you can only have a maximum of 4 other players that are awful. However, the other team can have 5. Over time, this gives you a statistical advantage over the other team you are truly a good player.

Do I get dumb people on my team? Sure, I got somebody that tried to res my clones repeatedly…but then you also see people this dumb on the other team too. The system isn’t targeting you to get placed with all the stupid people, it doesn’t hold some sort of grudge. On average, the other team will be just as dumb as yours. If you are able to raise the average skill level of your team, you will have a better than average win rate.

Additionally, a good and smart player can have an unbalanced effect on a match. Instead of just moaning about how your team rotates poorly, change how you play so that it complements the way the rest of your team is acting. As the only intelligent member on the team, it’s up to you to effectively analyze the game and determine how you need to play to best win.

On top of all of that, a 50% win rate is enough to progress even through ruby and diamond. 3 losses followed by 3 wins is a net gain of 2 pips. Therefor, even if you’re convinced that the system is forcing you to a 50% winrate, you still are able to make progress through the leagues.

Tl;dr: If you’re actually as good a player as you think you are, you’ll win a majority of the time anyway, regardless of the teams you get. If you’re still continuously losing, maybe you need to start thinking about blaming yourself instead of just the rest of your team.

Sure. Fair points. I completely understand.

These are all true assuming the bad players are not worse than the bad players on the other team. Had this happen to me before haha.

Also what you said is also true atleast until ruby because you cannot lose tiers. Now with ruby, one unlucky streak you have with roll of players you have might be more detrimental for you.

I mean it’s still about luck getting atleast better members on your team relative to the other team.

But again that luck is not getting any better without a decent player population that is big enough to atleast mitigate those horrid pvp experiences.

Also in regards to what you said, it still requires the perfect class for the job, I think even if you are better than your teammates, you will not keep them alive indefinitely if they die most the time in a team fight. you can’t bunker a point all game either.

It’s not about luck, it’s about averages. Over time, you’ll have just as many awful players with you as you will see against you. Over time, it balanced out. In any given match it won’t be perfectly even, but over 100 matches it will be very very close.

As I said, the system doesn’t hold a grudge against you. It’s not purposefully matching you with the worst players every time. Sometimes you’ll get worse ones, sometimes you’ll get better ones, and over time this all comes out to the average. If you, as a good player, are able to shift your team’s average higher, then you’ll win more.

Additionally, 50% winrate will get you through ruby and diamond, as I already said. Winning and losing the exact same amount of games will result in a positive pip amount 100% of the time. If you lose 3 or more, the next win gets you 2 pips instead of 1. If you win 3 or more, each win will give 2 pips. However, it is impossible to lose more than 1 pip at a time. This means that random variation in win and loss streaks will always result in a net gain of pips, allowing you to progress.

So the only downside here is to wait for the system to average out, which as you said might be atleast ~100 games, which is really putting super casual people at a disadvantage?

Of course me myself do not have any problem with the system at all, as you’ve said it does not really purposely punish you.

That was the point of my post, I think its not even the matchmaking system, it just does it job (50% win ratio, matching opponents) but the only thing that makes the result so different than its intention is that the awful/average player population is so big that the Matchmaker gets its variables from this pool hence you get these bad experiences on the forums.

Strictly speaking it puts super casual people at a disadvantage…but someone playing that little couldn’t hit legendary even with 100% winrate, so it’s not really relevant.

Most of the complaints you see here are from people who have played many games and are still stuck with no progress. You see the same themes over and over, ‘oh I always get bad teams, oh they don’t know how to rotate, oh I’m so much better than these people’.

No. If these people complaining actually were better, if they actually were skilled and intelligent, they wouldn’t have a 35% win rate across 150 matches. This is simply a case of self-delusion, people convinced that they’re great players when the reality is entirely different. That’s all.

StickerHappy.8052:

Fay.2357:

Statistically speaking, having bad players in the PvP pool is beneficial to you, if you’re a good player. Since you, as a good player, are on your team, you can only have a maximum of 4 other players that are awful. However, the other team can have 5. Over time, this gives you a statistical advantage over the other team you are truly a good player.

Do I get dumb people on my team? Sure, I got somebody that tried to res my clones repeatedly…but then you also see people this dumb on the other team too. The system isn’t targeting you to get placed with all the stupid people, it doesn’t hold some sort of grudge. On average, the other team will be just as dumb as yours. If you are able to raise the average skill level of your team, you will have a better than average win rate.

Additionally, a good and smart player can have an unbalanced effect on a match. Instead of just moaning about how your team rotates poorly, change how you play so that it complements the way the rest of your team is acting. As the only intelligent member on the team, it’s up to you to effectively analyze the game and determine how you need to play to best win.

On top of all of that, a 50% win rate is enough to progress even through ruby and diamond. 3 losses followed by 3 wins is a net gain of 2 pips. Therefor, even if you’re convinced that the system is forcing you to a 50% winrate, you still are able to make progress through the leagues.

Tl;dr: If you’re actually as good a player as you think you are, you’ll win a majority of the time anyway, regardless of the teams you get. If you’re still continuously losing, maybe you need to start thinking about blaming yourself instead of just the rest of your team.

Sure. Fair points. I completely understand.

These are all true assuming the bad players are not worse than the bad players on the other team. Had this happen to me before haha.

Also what you said is also true atleast until ruby because you cannot lose tiers. Now with ruby, one unlucky streak you have with roll of players you have might be more detrimental for you.

I mean it’s still about luck getting atleast better members on your team relative to the other team.

But again that luck is not getting any better without a decent player population that is big enough to atleast mitigate those horrid pvp experiences.

Also in regards to what you said, it still requires the perfect class for the job, I think even if you are better than your teammates, you will not keep them alive indefinitely if they die most the time in a team fight. you can’t bunker a point all game either.

It’s not about luck, it’s about averages. Over time, you’ll have just as many awful players with you as you will see against you. Over time, it balanced out. In any given match it won’t be perfectly even, but over 100 matches it will be very very close.

As I said, the system doesn’t hold a grudge against you. It’s not purposefully matching you with the worst players every time. Sometimes you’ll get worse ones, sometimes you’ll get better ones, and over time this all comes out to the average. If you, as a good player, are able to shift your team’s average higher, then you’ll win more.

Additionally, 50% winrate will get you through ruby and diamond, as I already said. Winning and losing the exact same amount of games will result in a positive pip amount 100% of the time. If you lose 3 or more, the next win gets you 2 pips instead of 1. If you win 3 or more, each win will give 2 pips. However, it is impossible to lose more than 1 pip at a time. This means that random variation in win and loss streaks will always result in a net gain of pips, allowing you to progress.

Statistically speaking, having bad players in the PvP pool is beneficial to you, if you’re a good player. Since you, as a good player, are on your team, you can only have a maximum of 4 other players that are awful. However, the other team can have 5. Over time, this gives you a statistical advantage over the other team if you are truly a good player.

Do I get dumb people on my team? Sure, I got somebody that tried to res my clones repeatedly…but then you also see people this dumb on the other team too. The system isn’t targeting you to get placed with all the stupid people, it doesn’t hold some sort of grudge. On average, the other team will be just as dumb as yours. If you are able to raise the average skill level of your team, you will have a better than average win rate.

Additionally, a good and smart player can have an unbalanced effect on a match. Instead of just moaning about how your team rotates poorly, change how you play so that it complements the way the rest of your team is acting. As the only intelligent member on the team, it’s up to you to effectively analyze the game and determine how you need to play to best win.

On top of all of that, a 50% win rate is enough to progress even through ruby and diamond. 3 losses followed by 3 wins is a net gain of 2 pips. Therefor, even if you’re convinced that the system is forcing you to a 50% winrate, you still are able to make progress through the leagues.

Tl;dr: If you’re actually as good a player as you think you are, you’ll win a majority of the time anyway, regardless of the teams you get. If you’re still continuously losing, maybe you need to start thinking about blaming yourself instead of just the rest of your team.

Vexarian.1069:

Booms.3952:

this guy was complaining in map chat for 3 hours. he literally has no life.

Thank you for promoting my eagerness to resolve this matter even more so. To be fair, it was more like an hour and a half.

So the point we’re trying to make is that you’re wrong. Nobody would actually make a bot for trebbing. You just got killed by someone that knows how to use a treb, and now you’ve come to the forums to complain about it, but anyone that knows anything about PvP can see through your story in an instant.

Pyriall.1683:

Fay.2357:

So somebody made a botting program to use on a map that only gets played maybe 1 out of every 10 games? Seems legit.

LOL, who cares how many times the map gets played. Botting shouldn’t be allowed, the problem is they don’t do anything about it.

You missed the point. Nobody is going to waste their time making a bot that only functions 10% of the time. Op obviously just got destroyed by somebody decent with the treb and is sore about it, there’s no bot here.

So somebody made a botting program to use on a map that only gets played maybe 1 out of every 10 games? Seems legit.

There is no direct comparison you can really make between MtD and sharper images by simply looking at the single condition they apply. They’re entirely different traits and function in different ways, so you need to actually look at the mechanics. When you do so, it becomes abundantly clear that MtD is far more effective than sharper images in every conceivable PvP situation.

Sharper images relies on your illusions remaining alive to perform attacks. You cannot burst with it, and its effectiveness is directly linked to how fast your illusions attack. It also has no inherent aoe; only applying aoe conditions if the illusion attack itself happens to be aoe. The trait is decidedly underwhelming unless you’re playing a pistol build…and it’s still underwhelming at that point because pistol is a purely single target phantasm and reflects are extremely common in PvP.

MtD is a shatter modification, applying one stack of torment per illusion shattered. This means it is aoe, you can control when it gets applied, you can burst with it, and it comes preloaded with confusion as an added bonus. It is by far the better of the two traits, for many reasons.

As I already said, pulling him early puts no pressure on your healer and tank if you’re smart about it. What you do, as the tank, is you pull VG a step or so into the next area. Once he’s there, just walk back into the inactive section. As long as VG is close enough to hit you, he’ll stay where you pulled him to, allowing you to safely attack him while simultaneously having him placed properly for the next breakbar and circle.

Justine.6351:

apharma.3741:

Also lol at focus reflects, it’s about as reliable as a bearbow ranger for doing anything useful in WvW at all.

?

its not about doing any one thing amazing compared to x-something else, its about doing multiple things all stacked in a single skill.

Multiple things? Ok…

1. Reflects. Poorly.
2. Line aoe cripple. Not really making me jump for joy here.
3. Aoe pull. Sure, this is solid…except that every group has stability and/or aegis and this fails to have any effect most of the time.
4. Light field. The type of field that guardians fart out whenever they press a button, and one of the most useless fields possible to drop.

Yes, it does multiple things…but they’re all bad.

Yep, move him early. What you can do is move him a step into the next section and then step back into a safe section so that you’re not eating the floor damage.

oogballer.2408:

yeah i encountered a player named giga and that guy whent personal gaining , not caring for a win, i have met her 15 times in a row last ni9ght, and asll matches it whent solo roaming, we all begged her not to do it, but match after match he or she continud and kept roaming and losing for us

You’re in the wrong section for the necromancer forums…

Ross Biddle.2367:

Fay.2357:

Ansau.7326:

If drop at the precise moment and location, Feedback is, by far, the most powerful utility of the game.

https://youtu.be/bTvC5aMHrSM?t=440

If by “precise moment and location” you mean “get super lucky that you drop feedback against a zerg spamming projectile attacks through a choke”….then sure.

The sadder part is that, unless it coincides with a counter push, it generates no downs, and results in no kills.

That’s actually the most important part. Zergs don’t spam projectiles when pushing, they spam projectiles when taking potshots through a choke. Feedback literally does nothing useful whatsoever when it actually matters.

Ansau.7326:

If drop at the precise moment and location, Feedback is, by far, the most powerful utility of the game.

https://youtu.be/bTvC5aMHrSM?t=440

If by “precise moment and location” you mean “get super lucky that you drop feedback against a zerg spamming projectile attacks through a choke”….then sure.

There are tricks you can use to determine range, but there’s absolutely no ingame indicators.

Crowley.8761:

Why would you even want to run boonshare and kitten yourself to do something Herald Rev does way better anyway?

Herald doesn’t boonshare like mesmer can. Mesmer takes the boons that herald and ele provide and doubles/quadruples them.

Azukas.1426:

Be hard pressed to have people give them to ya since boon share mesmers are generally ran by gvg guilds.

And g’luck getting builds from them

I always laugh at all the silly “secret builds” the GvG guilds claim to run. There’s nothing special about any of the builds they run. Anyone with a good head on their shoulders and experience with the class can figure out the builds any guild is running based on the role they play. There’s really very few optimal ways to do things, making it easy to determine how things are done.

For boonshare mesmer, you just throw signet of inspiration onto literally any build and you’re done. The boonshare strength doesn’t come from mesmer itself exactly, you need the proper team comp to put the boons on the mesmer to be shared. Mesmer is just an enabling factor, not a one stop shop for boon sharing.

You do not need to tank as a chronomancer, it’s just a good role for you to play.

It’s worth noting that tanking is a bit different in GW2. You’re guaranteed aggro by having the highest amount of toughness in the group, and from then on it’s just a matter of making sure you move the bosses correctly. As I said though, it’s not required.

The skill applies the given stack of vulnerability to enemies it hits. The skill applies the given stack of might to allies it hits. There is no ticking, and this is fairly decently laid out in the tooltip text I believe.

…ticks? What on earth are you going on about?

Justine.6351:

Xaylin.1860:

Temporal Curtain might be the weapon skill on Mesmers which improves the most when traited – which could also be interpreted as the base skill sucking balls… But I got to agree with Fay. Its neither the most traited nor the most stacked.

Regarding interrupts. Yes, it can interrupt. But you can hardly use it for skillful interrupt play because they introduced the delay. You’d pick it for the pull – yes, this is different than for interrupt – and maybe reflect. Although I don’t think it’s reliable enough for that unless you keep staying inside the walll.

I use it in wvw so YMMV.

Shield does almost everything better than the focus. The singular thing the focus can do is pull people off of siege, but even that is usually ineffective due to stab/aegis. The reflect on it is rarely useful, and can be done by guardians more effectively.

reikken.4961:

but has much better support

Oh sure, but I was just pointing out that while necro axe may be a bad weapon, mesmer takes the cake for the worst power weapon. Chrono, of course, is an indispensable part of a good raid team, but it’s not for the gs dps, that’s for sure.

Zenith.7301:

VodCom.6924:

My money is on a zerker (not valk) necromancer who can stack might, vuln and get to 100% crit chances all by himself. Nice ranged options are available if there is a need. Only drawback : the DPS has to ramp up.

The ele is also potent but made of toilet paper that will break if an enemy sneeze at it. However it has a higher initial burst than the necromancer.

A DPS Warrior (we are in a solo setup so no phalanx) is also very nice. However, you will miss some crit chances and will require to bring all of your targets to melee range either by clever positioning or by chasing them. Chasing targets is a huge DPS loss as the warrior does not have a very good ranged weapon.

Necromancer has even worse ranged weapons in a power spec compared to warrior.

Like, axe has got to be THE worst ranged power weapon in the game.

You forget your roots. Mesmer is always worse. Mesmer gs is abysmal dps.

Justine.6351:

Temporal curtain has to be the most stacked skill ingame, and the most traitable.

Having 1 trait —> Most traitable?

Sharing a trait spot with a trait generally considered to be essential in order to function in PvP —> Most traitable?

Too mindless and simple, I’m not a fan. If you want to implement such a strong boost as going unblockable, make it conditional.

Upon landing an interrupt, shatters are unblockable for 2 seconds.

-or-

Successfully countering attack causes shatters to be unblockable for 2 seconds.

Things like that.

Chrono has nothing to do with full dire and perplexity runes. Taking chrono gives you a 25% move speed passive, access to alacrity through shatters, a higher shatter cadence from illusionary reversion and chronophantasma that doesn’t force you to burn increasingly scarce dodges, and access to slow on interrupt.

You can also choose to take shield over torch. Obviously torch works will PU better, but shield is a powerful offhand with strong defense (block), offensive utility (slow, quickness), and hard cc (infinite target stun wall). A potential option, especially since you’re so hybrid, is sc/torch + sw/sh. You’ll make good use of sword power coefficients, so it’s not a huge waste like it would be on a rabid/dire build. You’ll also get access to the leap/swap, which is really nice offensive utility.

I’d also recommend getting rid of arcane thievery. It’s just really bad, even when traited. Long cooldown, easy to miss, underwhelming effect. If you can’t live without that condie cleanse, take the cleanse mantra instead.

Air overload hurts, but the main painful part is the persistent aoe it lays down. It’s easy to interrupt overloads so that’s the best option, but if they finish the overload…just walk out of the aoe. You’re playing WvW not PvP, so there’s no obligation for you to stand there and take it.

Sword revenants do a lot of damage. You counter them with hard burst, preferably followed by a quick escape into stealth.

Condie reapers should not be beatable by your build unless they’re bad. That being said, the majority of people in WvW are awful, so you can probably kill most reapers. Just keep in mind that a good one will rip you apart without a lot more condition removal than what you’re running.

So your build is hilariously glassy, but I’m sure you’re aware of that. It’s also very hybrid, so you’re going to have a quite respectable damage output on it.

Diamond skin is a hard counter for dire or rabid condie Mesmer. However, it is not at all a hard counter for a hybrid build like what you’re running. The only way they could stay above 75% consistently is if they also brought a lot of other healing and condition removal. This would necessarily mean they don’t do a lot of damage, but with your build it wouldn’t take a lot of damage to take you down. The Mesmer analogue would be running a full tank build with knights and cavs or something. Nothing will kill you, but you’ll be limited to dealing low damage that’s only a threat to someone that’s super squishy.

Similar deal with that scrapper. Scrappers don’t do tons of burst when specced for defense, but they do have decent sustained damage. You’ll often find yourself suddenly dangerously low because they initially didn’t do a lot of damage and so you assumed they weren’t super dangerous, and didn’t pay enough attention to the sustained damage they do while you’re trying to chase them down.

My recommendation vs scrappers is to take a poke at them and see how they fight. If you feel like you can drop them, then do so. If it feels like you’re not getting anywhere, just leave them be and move on.

Obligatory disclaimer: You should probably run chrono. It’s better.

The first thing I noticed is that you’re using the wrong food. You should be using the 20% condition duration food, as that adds more pressure than any other food. Other than that, the build is fine. You could experiment with losing signet of illusions for a different utility, but that will work.

With 3000 armor, you’ve got some serious wiggle room when fighting power builds. Even the glassiest thief isn’t going to take out more than half your health in a full combo, so you’re pretty safe. You just need to make sure you aren’t giving them freeby combos over and over. This means appropriately using your blocks (scepter/shield) to stop them from landing backstabs.

You’ll also need to deny them stealth if you actually want to kill them. For d/p this means interrupting the heartseeker through black powder. You can use chaos storm, gravity well, shield wall, or diversion to accomplish this. Make sure you follow up an interrupt with heavy burst. If you miss the interrupt, stand in the black powder. This is a trick you should know, having played thief, but standing in the black powder means the thief can only get 1 leap combo off; trying for another will cause revealed.

Just a note on temporal curtain. Without the recharge time, it’s a large aoe (~500 radius), .25 second cast time with almost no animation, hard cc, strong applied cc grouping utility with a 25 second untraited cooldown.

It was beyond broken. To put this another way, imagine if guardian binding blade would execute in .25 seconds and had no spinning animation associated with it. Wouldn’t be much fun, would it?

yanoch.7051:

Well HoT was super positive from the second they showed chronomancer until now. Even now mesmers are super powerfull as revenant. It’s just less faceroll.

Good players will always find a way to win since the class is still super strong.

Chrono was released and hasn’t had a significant buff outside of well cooldowns since the release of HoT. They have had many nerfs though, so you’re totally wrong. Nerfed alacrity, nerfed slow trait, nerfed slow, nerfed stomping, nerfed shield block, nerfed precog, nerfed squad swapping, nerfed precog again, and now nerfed more stuff that actually hits core mesmer harder than it hits chronomancer.

So yeah. HoT super positive for chrono until this point? Good try, come again next time.

Levetty.1279:

The worst part is that removing Mercenary Amulet was more then enough and didn’t effect PvE at all.

Silly Levetty, it wouldn’t be a true Anet nerf if they didn’t overnerf the same thing multiple different ways in the same patch.

Nothing to see here, just standard procedure of the balance team taking a massive dump on PvE to appease the esports god.

Move along citizens.

Obtena.7952:

People play this game competitively for money and Anet wants it to work for them. Call it whatever makes you happy. my point changes none.

Imagine how dull league of legends would be if it only had 10 champions and one single optimal way to build each one. There would be little to no variety in each match, just variations and repetitions of the same tired strategies, the same rotations; nothing interesting, new, or entertaining. That’s GW2 pvp right now.

Hell will freeze over before they successfully make an eSport out of this game as long as the diversity and complexity of pvp builds and fights stays at the bare minimum level. I appreciate the difficulty involved with balancing for multiple viable builds, but if they want their precious esports to succeed, they need to step up their balancing game enormously.

Obtena.7952:

Anet has esports going on

That’s pretty debatable. More accurate might be “Anet is shoveling buckets of money into kitten, then burying it.”

Edit: Ahhh forum censor, how I love you. Shoveling. Buckets. Of. Money. Into. An. Existing. Hole. Happy?

Grenix.3762:

Now that things have been sufficiently derailed I"m going to bring us back on topic.

At what point should i think about working on Ascended gear in HoT? I’m fully exotic now and the extra stats might be helpful making HoT easier. In fact, I’m finding that literally every little thing helps in these maps. A few stat boosts here and there, while not a major game changer, will go a long way towards (1) accomplishing the goal of getting ascended gear and (2) making myself just a little more resilient. Would spending some laurels be worth it as a starting point (I’m thinking amulet)?

Ascended gear priority:

1. Rings
2. Amulet
3. Backpiece
4. Accessories
5. Weapons
6. …
7. …
8. …
9. Armor

Rings can be easily obtained from fractals without a lot of time and effort. Amulet is bought with laurels. Backpiece is easily crafted from fractal drops. Accessories are either semi-expensively bought with laurels and ectos or purchased with guild commendations (I recommend going the latter route). Weapons are either crafted or picked up with a lucky chest, but don’t count on that one. I refuse to craft ascended armor as a matter of principle and so I’ve been buying that with magnetite shards from raids.

Yeah, this is anything but a PvP only problem. People in PvE have been complaining about the insane bagception for at least a year now, and it’s only gotten worse with all the identical looking/named HoT bags that for some ungodly reason refuse to stack.

Yeah, I’ll agree that marauder is a worthless choice. It’s lower damage than zerker with marginal survivability bonuses. It’s awful for PvE and not as good as a knights/cavs/valks mix for WvW stuff.

So regarding commander vs berserker, it depends on what you’re doing and your team. In fractals, commander gear is useless because the fights don’t last long enough to need 100% uptime across combos, so berserker gear is far better. In raids, commander gear is potentially useful to extend your quickness duration and make your rotations more flexible, but it’s not required as long as you have a herald with you.

Josh XT.6053:

For larger group play – I wouldn’t play a classic non-chronomancer mesmer unless you really only like to veil or portal. They don’t work well for larger groups unless they’re Chronomancer. Like Fay said above me, you’re best going with Ele, necro, warrior or Guardian for larger group play. I have builds for all of those in my forum signature ( http://asphyxia.tv/builds )

It’s worth noting that chronomancer isn’t actually all that much better. Wells have low range, small radius, poor damage, and long cooldowns. The shield wall is great for shooting through groups…except that hitting an invulnerable target makes it disappear, and any recently downed player is an invulnerable target. While chronomancer is strictly better than mesmer, it’s far from good.