Guild Wars 2

Disclaimer: This build sucks and you’ll be miserable playing it. In my professional opinion as a Mesmer expert, playing ele, necro, warrior, or guardian will be far more enjoyable.

Build:

You’ll need blink, veil, and one free utility. Often this is asked to be null field, but can be something else. You’ll want greatsword + sword/focus. Greatsword does poor damage, as does sword, but it’s the best of the bad options available. Focus does zero damage but allows you to drop a reflect wall that sometimes is a bit useful.

You’ll want domination, inspiration, and something else. None of the other options for traits are good for WvW, but it seems weird to be only using 2 traitlines so you may as well grab one. You’ll want to trait for focus reflects, glamour boosting , shatter boon strip, and mind wrack damage. The glamour trait is actually almost worthless with veil, but the other options are even worse.

You’ll want gear as glassy as possible without dying all the time. You still won’t do respectable damage, but you may as well at least try to do a bit.

Dajman.2740:

Hey all I am trying to get more into the pve and raiding side of the game as of late and have settled on playing a chronomancer. I know 100% quickness uptime and being able to “tank” are the reasons most chronos get into the raids so my question lies along those lines… What % boon duration should I be aiming for with the changes to alacrity? And does having a herald in your group effect the way you all gear out? Or should I simply stick with the gear to be able to provide that on my own with no outside aid?

I am currently farming for all of the Commander’s weapons and armor set but am a bit confused if I need the accessories? How much armor I need to shoot for? I have seen some people still take zerker accessories and trinkets but I am not sure if that has changed with the alacrity nerf as well. Is 50% still the gold standard of 100% quickness uptime?

So you can keep 100% uptime on quickness with no more than the 50% duration provided by a herald. You can use commanders gear and/or that one expensive sigil to boost your duration further for more flexibility in rotations.

You only need to have more toughness than the next highest toughness on the team. Ideally, this is nothing more than a single knights stat trinket, but obviously this will be determined by the team you raid with.

It’s worth noting that you also should be aiming to maintain 100% alacrity uptime on your subgroup. This is accomplished by maintaining at least 2 shield phantasms at all times.

Grenix.3762:

I keep reading that Chrono’s have a bunch of reflects but I don’t see it. Can anyone let me know how to set up those skill chains for high reflect uptime?

Chronos have no reflects. What they have is a bag of tricks that let Mesmer reflects be used a lot more.

You can force phantasms to respawn and perform their attack again immediately by shattering with chronophantasma traited. Alacrity itself lowers cooldowns of all reflecting abilities, and Continuum split lets you burn some reflects without actually sending them into cooldown.

My personal go-to combo when reflects are necessary (say uncategorized fractal) is to start with a warden, drop temporal curtain as the warden finishes its attack, then shatter the warden 1.5s before the end of temporal curtain to get a respawn and another attack. This will last long enough to drop a second warden. Normal mobs (harpies) are dead at this point, so move to the next one and do it again. On bosses just use feedback to fill the space between the attacks of the 2 wardens that comes up, and then drop a 3rd warden to complete the coverage (if necessary).

Josh XT.6053:

Vieux P.1238:

Josh XT.6053 Your missing the point & i’m not surprised coming from a Necro player. I’m voicing up my opinion on this continuances nerfing of the mesmer to the point that we only have one playable build. In the past nerfs, we had at least 3 to 4 viable builds to work with. So……..Why dont you wait till your main gets nerfed to the ground before posting idiocies on this thread.

PS: Chrono is top meta. Your point is irrelevant.

Let me be clear with you here – I play every class, but main Dagger/Warhorn Elementalist. I don’t know where you would be coming from thinking I only play necro and its the only reason I would think mesmer is strong still. Maybe you just aren’t very good at mesmer? I’m pretty decent at mesmer and I’ve won plenty of PvP fights, WvW fights and duels on my mesmer.

Mesmer has been way too strong for way too long, it can almost infinitely be in stealth and apply a lot of conditions or burst VERY hard with shatters. Now with chrono, it has a long block, access to aegis and still invuln from sword 2 lol.

And if what you’re trying to say is that mesmer isn’t strong without Chrono, that is also wrong because the old shatter meta is very strong to this day. It really sounds like a L2P issue that you’re having.

Can remain almost infinitely in stealth, access to aegis from chrono and invuln from blurred frenzy? I’m not sure what game you’re playing, but it’s not guild wars 2.

Additionally, if the old meta shatter build was so strong, one might think that you’d see it more often. That’s not to say that you can’t succeed with it, but simply that it’s not nearly as good as the other options around. I’ll make an analogy since simple logic usually misses the mark here on the forums.

Let’s say you’re trying to build a cabinet. Unfortunately, you’ve misplaced your hammer and you only have a wrench and a bunch of nails. You could probably hammer the nails in with the wrench, but the amount of effort you’d spend trying to do such a silly thing would be massively larger, and you’d still do a worse job than if you just asked your neighbor to borrow a hammer. This is the relationship between the meta condie shatter and other workable Mesmer builds.

Crowley.8761:

Silverkey.2078:

The point of Fay is simply that power shatter has 1 burst. That’s all. If you miss mind wrack you have no damage left.

On the other hand condi shatter can use every shatter for damage and recharge them all with the signet for another round, while always keeping max illusion count thanks to traits.

As always, the problem with power mesmer is the lack of sustained damage. We have one of the highest burst in the game. But this burst is highly telegraphed and with all passive procs, blocks/evades/invuln and innate tankiness, it does not suffice to pressure the enemy. Sadly our follow-up damage is ridiculously low.

I agree missing mind wrack does hurt you, but it is in no way a one-trick pony like you’re describing. Phantas don’t go away after and the typical damage I see with sword/gs phanta + my own stuff is roughly 6-8k when they pop off their attacks. Hardly call that follow-up nothing, add to that you won’t have a cd issue with them because of trait respawn and you can keep them up constantly. GS KB adds good utility for preventing stomps, peel, interrupt and point def/decap – adds a lot to how kitten slippery and frustrating a mesmer is to fight.

I get the point of condi chronoshatter but that specc being strong doesn’t make everything else not viable. I don’t like it because I find it horribly boring, but I won’t deny that it’s good. I just think some people are throwing around “not viable” because they read that somewhere. But really, power works. It might take a lot more fiddling to be really succesful and yeah you do need your utils to avoid getting creamed and yes you can get screwed over badly if you are constantly looking to land one big combo – adapting to the situation instead of looking for a one size fit all approach that you can menorize and repeat at will.

Phantasms go away after if your opponent is competent enough to cleave them down. They have basically no health, so it only takes one or two autoattacks to do.

If you’re so sure this works on players that aren’t imitating a target golem, feel free to make a video of you killing competent players with this convoluted combo that can be countered without any significant effort.

Crowley.8761:

Fay.2357:

I’ll take ‘Things that only happen to target golems’ for 1200, Alex.

It’s actually not that difficult to set up, is it? You start off with GS, do your thing, phanta up, swap weps, phanta up, drop well and you’re ready to burst. 3-3-2-F1.

Then you can just wait for your new phantas to hit again while doing whatever needs to be done, be it healing, dodging, blink, stealth, whatever. I think the real skill gap comes when deciding the best time for a split – which I totally suck at.

If that combo is golem only for most people I don’t think the power build strength is the main problem…

Let’s say you try to burst another chrono that way. You set it up, you land the swap, and then they press 2. Oops, no burst. Or maybe they press 4. Oops, no burst. Or what if they dodge the swap? Oops, no burst.

What about against an engineer? You drop the phantasm, aaaand it’s dead from aoe and cleave. Then you try to burst aaaand they block it with hammer.

What about against a revenant? You land the swap and burst buuuut they popped glint heal and full healed instead. Or maybe they used crystal hibernation. Or maybe they just cleaved down the phantasms as they spawned with their strong autoattacks.

Any sort of burst relying on multiple steps all lining up properly into an instant of burst can be mitigated by short duration active defense used appropriately. Mesmer burst has the added bonus of being mitigated simply by strong aoe pressure or dodging the immobilize on the swap. Landing that whole combo requires an opponent that doesn’t take any offensive or defensive actions to stop you. While people like this exist, they’re essentially just target golems.

Crowley.8761:

Silverkey.2078:

So PvP mesmer is only viable playing condi

I’ll quote myself in response to this:

Crowley.8761:

I think some of you guys are reading far too many meta guides and doing too little testing.

How much damage do you think you put out if say, you run gs+s/s power with chrono traits and you got your gs phanta and sword phanta out, you land a swap into blurred frenzy while double shattering after additional phanta hits while your target is standing in well of calamity?

I found out today. Not disappointed. Add some fun use of ContiSplit on top of that and good times were had by all.

What do you think the outcome was?

I’ll take ‘Things that only happen to target golems’ for 1200, Alex.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

Fay.2357:

Grenix.3762:

AliamRationem.5172:

I just got a mesmer to 80 myself. I wouldn’t say it feels powerful as the damage seems low, especially if you’re using greatsword – which I highly recommend in open world HoT! Self-healing is also fairly limited, but mesmer seems quite survivable anyway.

The illusions are highly effective at distracting enemies and greatsword’s range makes it difficult for them to reach you. You also have plenty of tricks like blink, decoy, etc. to make it that much more difficult when you need to.

I’m still playing around with builds but the illusions + greatsword combo seems effective in pretty much any configuration.

I’m definitely finding this to be true. The best way to not die seems to be avoidance – plain and simple. Decoy has been really great and firing at range with the greatsword gives you that much more survivability. I’m almost thinking the best off-hand weapon might be staff due to the teleport back and quick casting of clones which provides more cover, as you imply. The shield is really nice but I’m not totally sold yet and our options for the main-hand with shield seem a bit awkward to do anything else but get out of the fray.

Greatsword is great for one v one but tackling those pocket raptors and other groups gets really technical really quickly. I wish we had a better way to handle multiple mobs.

Shield is your best bet for pocket raptors with its aoe hard cc and good damage. Additionally, mainhand sword has blurred frenzy, one of the strongest defensive skills in the game. Shield also comes with the double block, better than almost any other skill Mesmer has for damage avoidance.

Avoiding damage rather than tanking it is always optimal on every class. Mesmer has an enormous amount of active defense between blurred frenzy, shield blocks, and shatters. HoT has a lot of nasty stuff that requires good use of these skills, as you’ll run into many mobs that won’t be deterred by a simple short range blink from phase retreat. All the frog archers, ranged chak, wyverns, and mordrem snipers will kitten on you if your only active defense is mobility.

In the end, mesmer/chronomancer is fairly subpar even with all the active defense in open world HoT.

Just play a necromancer/reaper with “Unholy Sanctuary” and you can go on and on and on and on… Just killing stuff without all the worries.

Personally I played most of the expansion as ranger/druid, which is easy too (even though I get bored of it fairly fast now). Damage is subpar, but you have an out-of-jail card all the time with “Celestial Shadow” which is making HoT open world just super easy.
Also, with your bouncing axe, you tag bloody everything in Dragon Stand, giving you insane amounts of XP.

I still spend time on my mesmer, but I sort of feel crippled in HoT when I try to get things done in a reasonable timeframe…

I’m aware of that of course, see my earlier comment:

Fay.2357:

‘Strong’ is an unlikely feeling to get from solo Mesmer in PvE. ‘Not garbage’ is a better milestone, and ‘reasonably workable’ is going to be a more achievable goal.

Grenix.3762:

AliamRationem.5172:

I just got a mesmer to 80 myself. I wouldn’t say it feels powerful as the damage seems low, especially if you’re using greatsword – which I highly recommend in open world HoT! Self-healing is also fairly limited, but mesmer seems quite survivable anyway.

The illusions are highly effective at distracting enemies and greatsword’s range makes it difficult for them to reach you. You also have plenty of tricks like blink, decoy, etc. to make it that much more difficult when you need to.

I’m still playing around with builds but the illusions + greatsword combo seems effective in pretty much any configuration.

I’m definitely finding this to be true. The best way to not die seems to be avoidance – plain and simple. Decoy has been really great and firing at range with the greatsword gives you that much more survivability. I’m almost thinking the best off-hand weapon might be staff due to the teleport back and quick casting of clones which provides more cover, as you imply. The shield is really nice but I’m not totally sold yet and our options for the main-hand with shield seem a bit awkward to do anything else but get out of the fray.

Greatsword is great for one v one but tackling those pocket raptors and other groups gets really technical really quickly. I wish we had a better way to handle multiple mobs.

Shield is your best bet for pocket raptors with its aoe hard cc and good damage. Additionally, mainhand sword has blurred frenzy, one of the strongest defensive skills in the game. Shield also comes with the double block, better than almost any other skill Mesmer has for damage avoidance.

Avoiding damage rather than tanking it is always optimal on every class. Mesmer has an enormous amount of active defense between blurred frenzy, shield blocks, and shatters. HoT has a lot of nasty stuff that requires good use of these skills, as you’ll run into many mobs that won’t be deterred by a simple short range blink from phase retreat. All the frog archers, ranged chak, wyverns, and mordrem snipers will kitten on you if your only active defense is mobility.

While I’m not a fan of the random misguided nerfs, sticker is right here. Exhibit a: the guy who got to legendary playing nothing but power shatter vanilla Mesmer.

Ultimately, any reasonably functioning build will work at most levels of play if you’re sufficiently good at it. However, if you’re already at your appropriate skill level matchmaking, you’ll do significantly worse than if you use a meta build.

Rising Dusk.2408:

I’ve joined pubs and killed bosses with dozens of groups who have never asked me once about my build, or even if I know what the encounter is like. It’s possible they assume I know what’s happening from my AP, but unless I join a group that specifically asks me to ping my gear, no one asks me to ping my gear. I think the only reason he might be getting singled out is if he constantly tries to do VG/Gors and is taking aggro, causing people to ask questions.

Anyway, Nike’s probably right.

If he’s trying raids at all, I guarantee that this is the case. If we get to VG and he starts following someone that isn’t me, I start asking questions real quick. If somebody just has a bit of toughness gear on, no big deal since I can swap for cavs trinkets. But if it ended up as someone with a full set of nomads…yeah. Not gonna fly.

The only WvW players you’re soloing as a pure nomad Druid are ambient mobs you’ve mistaken for players. That, or afk zerker thieves.

ironfrodo.7625:

Fay.2357:

TheSouL.1098:

Soloing Fotm isnt unrealistic

If you’re soloing, you will never even approach the theoretical maximum dps of a class, so the question is useless anyway. When soloing, staying alive and being good enough to use your defensive mechanics appropriately becomes vastly more important than anything else due to how the fights are balanced.

Yeah, you can solo fotm, but I guarantee you that the top dps build isn’t going to be the most efficient way to do it.

You are wrong

By all means, go make a video of you soloing a high level fractal and performing a perfect dps rotation while doing it. We’ll all wait.

Ravenmoon.5318:

Ostricheggs.3742:

From the interview, it seemed like he was telling it how it is from his perspective. I mean, he has a good point.

The sad thing is, I understand how he feels. I was DDoS’d during qualifiers for the first WTS along with many others on the NA side. Grouch pretty much let the match PZ vs Radioactive go for over 13 restarts. The stream was cut and basically were told that we could either replay the matches another day, or finish it today. Everyone voted to finish it that day. Despite it basically being a 4v4 at that point, we (The Abjured) still qualified.

While it was not “fun”, the makers of the tournament saw it through in a fair way, and at the end of the day nobody had any complaints about who won. The videos of the matches were later compiled and posted on youtube.

This is MY experience getting DDoS’d, and let me tell you it is the most frustrating thing to possibly have happen, let alone if you lose a match because of it, but it was presumably handled better than Argi’s case.

I’m not particularly familiar with the circumstances, but people should actually watch the interview instead of judging him seeming “unprofessional” for talking about what was asked of him in an honest way. It’s ostensible towards the end of the season that some will lose interest, especially when they don’t win!

It seems like people forget to realize that this tournament is actually ran by ESL and not ANet. I don’t get the salt here really. Yeah Grouch let you replay gazillion times … so what? It was unfair to Team PZ who had taken the necessary measures to counter the DDoS. You didn’t deserve to go there if it is how you say it. Never forget that beside money, you play for the people. That’s what sports is all about. Forcing 1-2k people to wait for your highness because you are too cheap to spend 20$ on DDoS protection is not sportsmanship.

And LOL at the “communist community” remark Made my day at what lengths people go to make themselves feel better on the internet Not everyone lives in a 3rd world communistic country mate.

Just to be clear: it’s not possible to stop a DDoS attack. It’s possible to prevent your ip from being resolved in the past, but there’s no quick fix to stopping a DDoS from a source that already has your ip.

Grenix.3762:

Yeah so I’ve been messing with this build Fay and at least 1 on 1 it’s a bit better. I am finding that if I spend more time at ranged that I’m much better off. I’ve also got clone (the ability that puts you in stealth) that helps take the heat off of me when I’m getting targeted which is helping survivability a ton. I still don’t feel ‘strong’ but so far things are going in the right direction.

‘Strong’ is an unlikely feeling to get from solo Mesmer in PvE. ‘Not garbage’ is a better milestone, and ‘reasonably workable’ is going to be a more achievable goal.

Grenix.3762:

Fay and Curt, thanks for the replies! So I’ve got a combination of 4 zerker and 2 knight gear which seems to be perfect for what I’m wanting. I I’ll give sword/focus + gs a try initially with the recommendations of Fay first and then give curt’s stuff a shot and see how it goes. I think the other deal is that because I’ve not finished Chrono that it’s just not a strong as it is balanced for.

Thanks!

So once you get the grandmaster minor in chrono, drop focus and grab shield. Mainly focus is for swiftness so that you’re not painfully slow, but that minor takes care of that issue. Shield has much better utility, defense, and aoe damage compared to focus, so it’s generally the better choice.

Euthymias.7984:

Fay.2357:

FrostDraco.8306:

Scipion.7548:

Are necros accepted in Dungeon and Fractals?

Depressing. I dont know other AAA mmorpgs where you can read that kind of question, “is class X accepted in …”.
Has GW2 the worst community or the worst balance classes ?

Play the game PWI as an assassin. Factions (guilds) and chat group constantly use “No sins” (assassin class).

Wait really? Back when I played, 5 aps sin was the gold standard for PvE dps, along with the party-wide celestial bloodpaint.

Hey, I remember that game. I really ought to log in and see how things are these days.
That said, 5APS was fazed out with later instance introductions. Its still usable for instances without, but a lot of the newer ones favor DPH/Skill use over APS.

That said, I havent seen cases here where necros aren’t wanted in an instance unless the party itself wants to fill spots in a specific way.

Every now and then I think about logging in. Then I remember the forum thread with people discussing how many 10s of thousands of dollars they spent gearing their characters in rank 9, and I decide not to log in after all.

TheSouL.1098:

Soloing Fotm isnt unrealistic

If you’re soloing, you will never even approach the theoretical maximum dps of a class, so the question is useless anyway. When soloing, staying alive and being good enough to use your defensive mechanics appropriately becomes vastly more important than anything else due to how the fights are balanced.

Yeah, you can solo fotm, but I guarantee you that the top dps build isn’t going to be the most efficient way to do it.

FrostDraco.8306:

Scipion.7548:

Are necros accepted in Dungeon and Fractals?

Depressing. I dont know other AAA mmorpgs where you can read that kind of question, “is class X accepted in …”.
Has GW2 the worst community or the worst balance classes ?

Play the game PWI as an assassin. Factions (guilds) and chat group constantly use “No sins” (assassin class).

Wait really? Back when I played, 5 aps sin was the gold standard for PvE dps, along with the party-wide celestial bloodpaint.

Let me start by saying that Mesmer is indubitably the worst class in the game to do open world content solo. Every other class will do it easier, faster, and safer. That being said, advice:

You’ll want sword/focus+gs. Scepter just is not a good choice for open world stuff. It has no cleaving damage and the single block is ineffective against many of the more dangerous mob types (multiple-hit stun frogs for example).

This is a power set, so you’ll need power stats. It’s possible to survive and solo fine in full zerker, but that’s not for everyone. If that’s too squishy for you, replace pieces of zerker with knights until you’re appropriately tanky that you don’t die as much.

Build should be domination/chrono/X. You can take inspiration for heals and defense if you’re having difficulty staying alive, dueling for more damage, or illusions for more of a mixed bag of choices.

For mastery progression, you need to maximize exp gains. There used to be some farm spots where this was optimized, but they may have been nerfed/fallen out of favor. I’d recommend doing dragon’s stand and the verdant brink meta events, as those are easy to follow and have good rewards. Auric basin is decent as well.

StickerHappy.8052:

Fay.2357:

StickerHappy.8052:

Pro league is the best representation of the pvp scene.

That’s pretty arguable. Does one look to the salary of the ceo for the best representation of wages in a company?

The pro league is simply one facet of the PvP scene, but I’d argue that standard highish level play outside of pro league is the best representation.

But let’s be frank here, what else is the best representation of pvp? The people you see in AGs and ESLs are the same people in PL, imo its just a different name but let’s say top tier is best representation of pvp.

By standard highish level play I’m talking more than the 15-25 “pros”. I’m talking the top 300-500 players, maybe even 1000-1500 players. When you expand to that size, you get a much better idea of what’s actually viable for the playerbase as a whole.

You may say ‘but the top 1500 players doesn’t accurately reflect how the game performs for the pro league folks’, and you’d be right. However, that ultimately doesn’t matter. The pro league folks will find the optimal builds to play, and will use those builds. There will always be 5-6 top builds/classes, and several left at garbage tier for pro league. This is inherent to the fact that the balance team is not the right hand of god. So regardless of how the balance is, pro league will always look roughly the same.

So the question becomes: if pro league balance doesn’t matter, what does matter? Well, what matters is having the vast majority of players being able to enjoy/have a chance in PvP. That’s why you look at the top 1000-1500; it gets you a much more realistic view of what the current PvP environment is. Not everything will be viable in pro league, but as long as it’s reasonably viable in the top 1500, then it’s ok because that means the majority of players will find it viable.

Tl;dr: There will always be unviable classes at the pro league level, and this is ok. What matters is that all class are viable below the pro league level.

kdaddy.5431:

Fay.2357:

kdaddy.5431:

Azukas.1426:

I had a few issues with the interview.

First and foremost he’s acting like a child. A DDOS happened and it is what it is. You can’t cheat to right that and then get all upset when caught. Life happens and there are times you just have to man up and take it.

The lack of respect for Anet who put this together. Look I’m the farthest thing from an Anet fan boy but if I’m making money playing this game ima treat that league with respect.

I agree completely,

Everyone is crying for a pause mode. Obviously i have no clue about online sports but real sports doesnt have the “ok lets stop everything for the hurt player”.

I seriously wonder why they dont just buy a firewall for $20 a year, thats what some of them are for.

A DDOS attack cripples one player of a team. Are you trying to claim that if one player on the field gets a charlie horse and collapses, the refs wouldn’t temporarily stop the clock?

Ravenmoon used a foot ball example so i will go basketball since this was my sport k-12 and college.

Kobe bryant tore his achillies tendon and they didnt stop the game. He got fouled and they told him to get up and leave the court or to shoot his free throws or his team will be charged a timeout.

Steve nash just 4-5 years ago had his nose broken during a game and it wouldnt stop bleeding. He was not allowed to play in the game and they were charged with a timeout for him and the suns trying to get him back on the court.

Now these are actual sports and actual injurys whether is basketball or football. The DDOS attack from what i was told can be fought by 3rd party software ESL suggests some and a guild mate told me buying a legit firewall takes care of it.

Just like a REAL PROFESSIONAL who gets paid to do something. You take precautions and i think when you are potentially earning a couple thousands dollars you can afford to get a $20-50 firewall.

The problem with your example is that real sports teams have this in mind, and have an ample 2nd string of subs in the event of something like this occurring. If a system like this were in place for esports, then a single person getting ddosed would be a minor issue; pause the game, sub the new guy in, continue the game.

Additionally, anyone telling you that ddos attacks can be fought by 3rd party software is lying through their teeth. It’s possible to prevent your ip from being discovered by taking careful steps to hide it (which can involve 3rd party software). However, there is no existing way to actually stop a ddos attack once they have you targeted. You connect to the internet through a specific pipeline, and that pipe can only transfer so much data at once. If someone goes over to that pipe and hooks up the outlet of a fire hydrant to it, you’re going to have trouble communicating with anything past that fire hydrant, and that’s the concept of a ddos.

kdaddy.5431:

Azukas.1426:

I had a few issues with the interview.

First and foremost he’s acting like a child. A DDOS happened and it is what it is. You can’t cheat to right that and then get all upset when caught. Life happens and there are times you just have to man up and take it.

The lack of respect for Anet who put this together. Look I’m the farthest thing from an Anet fan boy but if I’m making money playing this game ima treat that league with respect.

I agree completely,

Everyone is crying for a pause mode. Obviously i have no clue about online sports but real sports doesnt have the “ok lets stop everything for the hurt player”.

I seriously wonder why they dont just buy a firewall for $20 a year, thats what some of them are for.

A DDOS attack cripples one player of a team. Are you trying to claim that if one player on the field gets a charlie horse and collapses, the refs wouldn’t temporarily stop the clock?

Well, all 3 people that used it will be terribly irritated I imagine.

StickerHappy.8052:

Pro league is the best representation of the pvp scene.

That’s pretty arguable. Does one look to the salary of the ceo for the best representation of wages in a company?

The pro league is simply one facet of the PvP scene, but I’d argue that standard highish level play outside of pro league is the best representation.

Exciton.8942:

messiah.1908:

so with amulet changes i think we’ll see more warrior

although good mesmer can still be good with carrion or rabid just have to play more careful

I don’t think mesmers need to worry about warriors. With phase retreat and blink, it is easy to kite warrior for days unless they go for rifle.

The real threat to mesmers are still revenants and thieves.

Good luck kiting on top of a point…

Remember, this is sPvP. If you’re running away to survive an encounter, you’ve lost the encounter.

…why?

/15characters

BetterHappy.2517:

I was refurring to the 1000 base stats players have as base. Removed it from post already to remove confusion.

These changes would make it hit roughly as hard as sword with regards to condi+power damage.

Fay, I know you love to derail any post I make in the forum that is your home. But decreasing attack speed, and increasing damage makes it hit harder. That’s how math works. Yes staff can bounce additional times but the reduced cast time, and reduced missile speed would address this. And hell if the burn was a full second that’d be swell but I’m not about to post something as from one extreme to the other, buffing it to the point the idea just becomes a joke.

Anywho, I’m out. no more input from me on this, I get banned every time I teach you math.

Just gonna mention this for the last time, instant projectile and reduced cast speed. Makes damage more consistent. Increasing the base damage (over 100%) increases damage… giving guaranteed access to fury lets you use harder hitting skills after your chain for more consistent damage.

Pls

But why make it a power weapon? We’ve already got power weapons. We don’t need yet another single target power weapon. There’s just no need for that. You’re saying you’ve buffed the damage on it, but really you’ve just made it go from a strong condition based attack to a weak condition based attack with mediocre power damage.

BetterHappy.2517:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Winds_of_Chaos

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Mind_Slash

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Mind_Spike

Educate yourself on base damage and ratios. This would be a buff to the weapon, and the clones that use it. Because this has effectively no travel time your 1s burn would come from clone+self auto. Also this auto attack would be faster, and it’s a huge buff to base and ratio damage. I used a nerfed version of the sword chain.

Mesmer isn’t a burn class, it shouldn’t be burning things to death, the burn is merely a guaranteed damage add.

Also you’d gain fury at the end of you chain, which would let you follow your chain with reliable damage…

So first of all, base damage isn’t a thing that exists, so you can go ahead and scrub that from your idea.

Secondly, it would be a ranged single target power attack that still does extremely underwhelming damage. It would be a direct nerf to damage because the current staff attack can hit multiple targets, already generates fury, and has drastically longer duration conditions.

Staff is a condition weapon. Your changes would make it into a crappy version of scepter.

Twilight Demon.5324:

mesmer already has the lowest sustained dps in the game having alacrity as a boon means it becomes a choice if the mesmer wants to spec boon duration or flat damage. being able to cast more doesn’t mean i’m doing the same type of damage. power shatter depends on spiking the opponent and running, chronotank relies on buffing his team mates to make up for the lack of damage, condi relies on longer fights to drag out the damage. you also have to remember that boons can only stack up to 9 times and that it does already. giving boon duration to alacrity means that it can be corrupted into chill, or boon stripped. and if it can be countered it’s not over powered.

Your argument makes no sense whatsoever. Chrono can already keep personal alacrity up 100% of the time with no difficulty. Making alacrity a boon would be a purely bad thing because it would allow for stripping and corruption.

Not sure whether the auto changes would be a buff or a nerf honestly, with how low those durations are.

I like your idea for the 4th skill, but it sorta steps on the toes of continuum split a bit.

Fashion Mage.3712:

Fay.2357:

It’s also worth noting that boon duration really isn’t all that great for boon share. SoI doesn’t use boon duration because it just copies the current boons, and most of the good boons come from guards/eles/revs, so boon duration on you isn’t super useful.

You apply boons to yourself, they last longer, and thus they last longer on allies. Simple, no?

Notably, boon duration hugely helps with Chaotic Dampening’s protection (giving basically perma-protection easily), with building and maintaining might stacks from Chaotic Interruption, and it gives more quickness from Time Warp if you choose to use it.

You don’t need any boon duration for easy permanent protection from chaotic dampening if you’re chaining leaps properly, especially if there’s a revenant handy. If you’re relying on a mesmer with CI to generate might stacks, you’re barking up the wrong tree, and time warp rarely gets solid use due to the mobility of most WvW battles.

Terrorsquad.4802:

Ppl here are not on topic… Quite hard for Anet if you’re not giving any feedback.

Chrono & Revs need to be toned down before S3.

They’re on topic, they just think you’re wrong. That doesn’t mean they’re derailing, it just means this isn’t the echo chamber you thought it would be.

Boonshare builds are worthless unless you’re actually running in a comp designed to utilize them. You need to be in a party of the right size, with someone providing the necessary boons to share or it’ll just fizzle with some bad boons.

It’s also worth noting that boon duration really isn’t all that great for boon share. SoI doesn’t use boon duration because it just copies the current boons, and most of the good boons come from guards/eles/revs, so boon duration on you isn’t super useful.

It’s solid in PvE if you actually need that kind of boon stripping output (rarely necessary).

It used to be great in PvP, but as ross mentioned there’s so much more random aoe pressure and defenses flying around that it’s largely become useless.

The thieves actually got the idea from us. The next time I’m on I’ll go through and send out invites. The guild has been more active lately since the new updates, so it’ll be worth doing.

So this is basically what we’ve already figured as a condie dps version…but it’s still got all of the issues with the build that show why nobody uses it.

Your team alacrity uptime is garbage. Shield phantasms are required to keep reasonable alacrity on your team, because the wells don’t even remotely give enough. This lowers the dps of your party by more than the relatively small amount you get from the duelists. You’re only pumping out 14k dps at best, which is basically trash-tier.

For any fight where you want damage on multiple targets, this build is garbage. Take gorseval. You are completely unable to do any damage to the adds, and you’re essentially dead weight on charged spirits. On Slothy, you’ll be useless for dealing with the sloth grubs since you can’t equip a focus without losing basically all of your damage.

It’s also worth noting that you’re not even managing to keep up permanent alacrity on yourself which drastically slows down your CS combo rotation uptime. You’re also not using chronomancer runes, which means you’ll absolutely not be keeping permanent alacrity up on your party.

Basically, you’re sacrificing massive amounts of party support for a tiny bit more damage that still doesn’t even begin to compare to a real dps class.

melandru.3876:

Fay.2357:

melandru.3876:

SPNKr.6208:

Lol melandru and phokus, how are you falling for this?

@Exciton: Yeah, I agree moa still has its place.

not falling for it, it was too obvious
i replied, a bit annoyed because anet actually listen to such posts(if they are written better) and there is enough proof for that. every balance patch, has stuff that you go “huh what, why did they nerf this, that is totally uncalled for”
this is starting to frustrate me

well, time to nerf time warp now.

Dude, you were had. You ate that bait hook, line, and sinker. Admit it with grace.

not at all, it just starting to p!ss me off

for example https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Balancing-Moa

a random dude “fought 1 1vs1 in wvw” and lost, so lets talk about moa

5 days later, moa nerfed LOL
not saying that this guy is the reason, it’s the more of why. he fought ONE time versus a mesmer, and lost LOOOOL

wvw roamers, are mostly very skilled players. with the money for good buffs/food/crystals. with good gear and with good skill.
in pvp i win most fights from thiefs, in wvw i get ganked pretty often. that is not me being worse then in pvp. that is these thiefs being better. since they can go full burst.

half of these forums are posts like this. i remember seeing a ele in ranger forum a while ago “omg he just spammed rapid fire on me till i died” hah lol

Bull, you wrote a massively long post filled with personal insults. You don’t do that if you’re just annoyed at the type of post you’re responding to. You do that when you’re angry at the person.

“Guys like you are the cancer of MMOs.”

Yeah, I’m not buying your excuse.

Alex Shatter.7956:

Mesmer was fine before HoT. It wasn’t top tier, but I call that a good thing.

Mesmer was fine? Ok, lets see your arguments.

Alex Shatter.7956:

It could veil in WvW,

Be still my heart, it was useful for pressing one utility skill and then going afk the rest of the fight.

Alex Shatter.7956:

was a great roamer

Sure, this is true.

Alex Shatter.7956:

could duel in PvP

Top tier dueling server profession, for sure. Unfortunately for anybody that actually played PvP, being great in dueling servers didn’t translate at all into the actual game.

Alex Shatter.7956:

and it’s support in dungeons was decent too.

If by “decent” you mean “outclassed by guardians in both support and utility with the single exception of being able to portal” then sure…

Alex Shatter.7956:

The mesmer I remember was the margin profession. It was great. What makes you so bitter about it? And why do you prefer the streamlined, purple thing Anet spat out in October?

Yeah, the mesmer you remember never existed. You remember a modified history where the class wasn’t nearly as useless as it actually was.

Alex Shatter.7956:

Fay.2357:

Varezenem.2813:

Fay.2357:

Varezenem.2813:

Simonoly.4352:

Can’t tell if satire. Need more sleep.

It’s probably not a satire. Condi mes and bunker mes are highly unpopular with people pretending to be long time mesmer mains

Fixed that for you. 620 hours is a long time Mesmer main? Don’t make me laugh. Come back when you’ve cracked 3k and we’ll talk.

Didn’t say that he was a long time Mesmer main. (I’ve been rev main for longer than that.)

But AFAIK they want power shatter back over the “skilless” condi Mesmer.

You have 2 types of people complaining about condie Mesmer.

Type 1 is bads that have complained about condie Mesmer for years, even when it was awful. No matter how badly it gets nerfed, they’ll still be whining about it. This is the vast majority of complainers.

Type 2 is mesmers that have put on their rose colored glasses for reminiscing about the good old days when power shatter was used instead of condie shatter. However, they conveniently forget that power shatter was still garbage tier, played only by Helseth because he’s too stubborn to do anything else. This is a small minority though, because most mesmers aren’t so insanely myopic.

That’s the point. Everything should be garbage tier. That’s how you achieve balance. The meta was better back then because people played garbage builds and it was chill. Not ideal, but it was feasible.

Yeah, you’re totally wrong. Mesmer had nothing but garbage builds. Other classes had great builds. Your 620 hours of experience are clearly not even remotely enough to understand what the class needs and what it should be.

melandru.3876:

SPNKr.6208:

Lol melandru and phokus, how are you falling for this?

@Exciton: Yeah, I agree moa still has its place.

not falling for it, it was too obvious
i replied, a bit annoyed because anet actually listen to such posts(if they are written better) and there is enough proof for that. every balance patch, has stuff that you go “huh what, why did they nerf this, that is totally uncalled for”
this is starting to frustrate me

well, time to nerf time warp now.

Dude, you were had. You ate that bait hook, line, and sinker. Admit it with grace.

Zedek.8932:

Booms.2594:

Ellie.5913:

fishball.7204:

Nobody said close competitive matches are bad. Unranked doesn’t offer competitive matches though, you could be teamed with ESL players or total newbs because of the way the matchmaking system works.

For some people it’s like fighting 4 NPCs and 1 player while having 4 NPCs yourself. That’s not fun or competitive. The quality of team mates and enemies vary far too greatly to be of any fun.

Season 2 ranked had its own share of problems but so does unranked.

I agree that SOME matches are bad in unranked but as you can see from my screen shot you also get some matches that are VERY close. And personally I find way more close and competitive matches in unranked than in the current ranked. That’s why I probably won’t ever play ranked again. But I sure can’t wait until they put ranked back so people can finally stop begging for it, and so I can remove my pvp tag thing it’s really annoying me and doesn’t match my outfits at all.

i dont think you understand. I have matches where I can easily win 1v2’s while my team loses 2v1’s to the same players. Literally if you got the average skill of the other 4 on my team, put that skilled player as a 5th instead of me, my team would get 500-0’d undoubtedly. Instead we win 500-400 because I can farm the extremely horrible players on the other team while my team loses fights.
Just because it’s clsoe doesn’t make it even close to fun. They don’t even understand what to do when you TELL them what to do. Like it’s actually so frustrating it kittenes me off. I’ve only done less than 10 unranked qs since offseason started but its by far the most annoying thing I’ve had to do in a while. I don’t mind being blown out 500-100 if it means I’m vs pro league players with at least tier 3 players on my team.

Had to quote it in full because all is so true. The exact same thing happens in League of Legends and reading your post was balm for my soul. Today I won games because I could farm 3 enemies at once, my 4 (!) other guys lose against two. We won closely, but it felt like I had 5% less kittenedness on my side and thus winning. They do not speak English at all, like they are bots and keep continuing their awful gameplay or whatever that might be called.. But was this fun? No. I score a double kill, enemy scores a double kill. Actually, it was like (1vs4) vs (1vs4).

I wish you wouldn’t have said that because now I put back my plans to try PvP in this game yet again. It’s like wanting to buy a house but you know there’s mold and rats. If they fix that, I will gladly try this feature of GW2..

Not to derail or anything, but that means you should be following your team around to keep them alive unless you absolutely have to go clean up a lane elsewhere. If you’re there to bulldozer through every fight that your teammates stumble into, they’ll get assist gold and eventually become built enough to stand on their own.

Necro specced for condie transfer is the easiest counter. Even if you don’t land the transfers on the Mesmer itself, you’ll still clear the condies by landing them on clones, which keeps you alive. While the Mesmer build has okish condie removal, it can’t handle the condie pressure that a necro can pump out as long as you’re landing the transfers at least part of the time. Just make sure you dodge moa and you’re good to go.

Varezenem.2813:

Fay.2357:

Varezenem.2813:

Simonoly.4352:

Can’t tell if satire. Need more sleep.

It’s probably not a satire. Condi mes and bunker mes are highly unpopular with people pretending to be long time mesmer mains

Fixed that for you. 620 hours is a long time Mesmer main? Don’t make me laugh. Come back when you’ve cracked 3k and we’ll talk.

Didn’t say that he was a long time Mesmer main. (I’ve been rev main for longer than that.)

But AFAIK they want power shatter back over the “skilless” condi Mesmer.

You have 2 types of people complaining about condie Mesmer.

Type 1 is bads that have complained about condie Mesmer for years, even when it was awful. No matter how badly it gets nerfed, they’ll still be whining about it. This is the vast majority of complainers.

Type 2 is mesmers that have put on their rose colored glasses for reminiscing about the good old days when power shatter was used instead of condie shatter. However, they conveniently forget that power shatter was still garbage tier, played only by Helseth because he’s too stubborn to do anything else. This is a small minority though, because most mesmers aren’t so insanely myopic.

Varezenem.2813:

Simonoly.4352:

Can’t tell if satire. Need more sleep.

It’s probably not a satire. Condi mes and bunker mes are highly unpopular with people pretending to be long time mesmer mains

Fixed that for you. 620 hours is a long time Mesmer main? Don’t make me laugh. Come back when you’ve cracked 3k and we’ll talk.

Not that I’m calling your picture a fake, but how exactly do you figure that drawing sloppy red lines on a screenshot is equal to proof that you don’t know how to photoshop better than that? What stops you from doing a quality shop and then opening the result in mspaint for a couple sloppy red lines?

Windwalker.7421:

Yeah but a stun break with a 3/4 second cast time is plainly absurd. Never mind that the rest of the ability is meh anyway you slice it, but that cast time just kills it dead.

It simply can’t compete as a stun break utility with other ones we have, and brings very little otherwise.

By definition of what a stun break is, it has to be short casting or instant…otherwise it simply won’t work when you need it the most.

The stun break occurs instantly. This is why an interrupt will put it on the full cooldown. It works just fine as a stun break, it’s the rest of the skill that’s awful.

@Soothsayer: Unless it got changed without me noticing it, persisting images will only apply retal to phantasms, and only 5 seconds of it. The 5 seconds of retaliation is completely and utterly useless, and that nerf from permanent to 5 seconds upon summon is what relegated my immortal build to the garbage bin.

Edit: Hold that thought. I’ve got some kitten I need to test.

Chaba.5410:

Transferring “as a community” typically is the result of stagnation with regards to opponents. Players are more willing to stay on a server when the matches are fun and they are facing new opponents almost every week.

Yeah, but your assumption is somewhat faulty. You’re assuming that these glicko cliffs are merely artifacts and don’t represent the true difference in strength between border servers. However, when in the past the random rolls have boosted a medium server and allowed a higher border server to come down, the results have generally shown that the difference between the T1 bottom border server and the T2 top border server is still massive. This indicates that the basic problem is not with glicko itself (it does have problems though), but instead with server stacking.

Therefor, we reach a conundrum. Community transfers are caused by stagnation, which themselves cause more stagnation after a brief period of reshuffling. The only way to break that cycle is for the Anet hand of god to come down and smush it by directly instituting changes that prevent community transfers from happening. This could look like the following set of directives:

Preface: All references to “population” are to the total active WvW population of a set of paired servers.

1. A mean and standard deviation of population shall be calculated for all WvW servers
2. No transfer may occur to any server with a population higher the mean
3. Server transfer fees are reduced for any server with a population lower than one standard deviation beneath the mean
4. Population mean and standard deviation are recalculated once weekly at reset
5. Server population is compared to existing mean and standard deviation immediately after each individual transfer occurs, updating transfer allowability and fees appropriately

This set of regulations would enforce population balance. Over time the standard deviation would decrease and all servers would approach the mean. However, these regulations would be rightly called draconian, and will never occur for the reasons I discussed in my first post.

skcamow.3527:

messiah.1908:

Curunen.8729:

Xyonon.3987:

I’m not a pvp player but did the last patch not at least give precognition a chance for a comeback?

It’s still bad unfortunately.

i dont think its bad (compare to what we used to have yes its bad)
but atm you hardly need 3 sec aegis (if you get burst) nor the stability. only maybe the break stun . still useable if you dont see anything else to fit in the 3rd slot

I still don’t like the current functionality, but with ~20s CD (assuming perma alacrity), if you’re running the well trait for alacrity sharing it’s not too bad.

It’s a bad skill on a low cooldown. This doesn’t make it not bad, but it does make it somewhat usable.

I honestly don’t give a flying kitten about the moa nerf since I never use the skill, but if anyone thinks that the QQ is going to stop now, they’re delusional. The crybabies on the PvP forum will just move to the next thing on Mesmer they want nerfed.