Guild Wars 2

Lakshmi.5941:

Which classes are fastest at breaking breakbars? I saw warrior discussed above… any others?

Due to the specifics of how it works on larger targets, Mesmer shield 5 is by far the single largest bar breaker in the game. I believe the second largest is revenant staff 5, for a similar reason.

Quasar.1756:

I never said anything to which thieves can claim a monopoly to, I just stated abilities about the profession that shows the viable utilities THEY CAN bring to the raids.

I understand, and I didn’t mean to imply that you thought that. My intention by mentioning that was to point out that soft cc conditions like cripple, immob, and chill are generally applied in heavy doses between the 10 members of any given party, so the specific ability to do so isn’t necessarily a valuable capability.

Quasar.1756:

You claim tripwire is a good breaking skill, that utility is a cripple, so by your definition; abilities with ‘cripple’ in them are good to use.

While tripwire does cripple, that’s not what makes it good. The important part of that skill is the 2 second knockdown, which is a hefty cc.

Quasar.1756:

The majority of abilities I mentioned earlier are “Utilities” and not "Skills’. For a thief, the “skills” don’t have a CD, which makes them spammable or at least able to cast more frequently compared to other professions that may bring those same support to the raid.

I think you’re getting tangled up in an unimportant syntactical quagmire. This thread isn’t asking about “utility skills”, it’s asking about the general capabilities of a class, termed as ‘utility’. The specific slot that provides the capability is unimportant.

Quasar.1756:

“Steal” + “Tripwire” can be done with a blink of an eye

This is quite true, but if the boss happens to be pulsing some sort of nasty pbaoe enrage attack (the vale guardian we saw in the beta was in an enraged state when you needed to break the bar) then even that short time could be dangerous. It might not be, but the point is that needing to be at point blank range is potentially a liability, and something to consider.

Quasar.1756:

Listen, I’m not here to bash your post or make you feel bad. I just want thieves to have a fair share in the raids.

I’m not trying to say that thieves shouldn’t be taken in raids, though if I wanted I make that argument I’d just point out that all other dps classes gain massively from alacrity, while thieves gain nothing (and this is a problem that should be corrected). I just wanted to correct the misconception that headshot, a .25 second daze, is still a strong method of putting cc on a boss. Many people still remember how fantastic headshot was at clearing defiance stacks, and assume it’s great for a breakbar too, but that’s unfortunately no longer the case.

Yes.

/15characters.

Any update on this?

Hot Boy.7138:

But mesmer is attacking from all directions at all times with clones, phantasms, shatters, and wells. Mirror Blade should be blockable.

Don’t worry, I’ve had a lot of experience with sort of issue. I diagnose it as a terminal case of PEBKAC.

Quasar.1756:

Fay.2357:

Quasar.1756:

Their CC is really powerful and don’t forget how “Shadow Refuge” saved many a person in dungeons back in the day….Thieves bring the numbers on dps needed to make the bosses hp melt alot faster.

Outside of venomshared basi venom, thief cc is very weak. With old defiance, headshot .25s daze was as good as a 2s stun, but that’s not the case anymore. With the new break bars, headshot barely scratches them.

Huh…Needle trap, Tripwire, Caltrops, Impairing Daggers, Debilitation Arc (6 sec. Cripple)…now if these don’t work on boss then yea, but the majority of these abilities have a more than 2 sec. duration, it’s an insult to label these VERY WEAK CC

Cripple, immob, and slow all put a flat degen on the break bar, and thieves hardly have a monopoly on those three conditions (chrono will be doing close to perma slow alone). Since you can’t stack those in intensity, there’s no reason to stack so many skills that apply it. The only good breaking skill there is tripwire, and that may be difficult to get onto a boss when necessary, depending on the situation (pbaoe requires you to be on top of the boss to cast it, potentially very dangerous to do).

Quasar.1756:

Their CC is really powerful and don’t forget how “Shadow Refuge” saved many a person in dungeons back in the day….Thieves bring the numbers on dps needed to make the bosses hp melt alot faster.

Outside of venomshared basi venom, thief cc is very weak. With old defiance, headshot .25s daze was as good as a 2s stun, but that’s not the case anymore. With the new break bars, headshot barely scratches them.

Thinks I don’t do: Download random files off of mega.

Andraus.3874:

You guys are doing it wrong.

1) Get a team of 5 guild mates
2) Have each mate create a new Char character with the same exact ugly characteristics.
3) Make sure you’re making it as big and ugly as possible.
4) Name them exactly the same, with each name changing slightly with a ’ Over a letter.
5) Equip Wing back piece and some outfit everyone has.
6) make sure everyone is using deceptive evasion
7) watch the rage quit.

I did this with a friend it was hilarious. With lots of clones it actually makes it somewhat challenging to tell which is the real Mesmer.

I mean seriously. Can you imagine 20 huge char mesmers/clones/ phantasms with those huge wings all on the same point.

Also
8) make a video and post it here if you actually do this. Or Pm me in game and let’s make it happen.

If I do this, I promise I’ll record it.

Not are you insanely aggressive, you’re also insanely insulting, and insanely wrong all at the same time. Such a wonderful combination!

I could back up my statement that you’re insanely wrong buuuuuuuuuuuuuut quite honestly I don’t care to, you’ll just have to take it on my word. If somebody else wants me to explain, I’ll consider it.

How about somewhere in between? They deal competitive damage, have pretty solid potential for bar-breaking, and have a lot of good support utility.

Just did some testing.

The heal scales properly with healing power. The final heal scales at 1.2, while the initial heal scales at .3. However, the initial heal, regardless of healing power, is 640 less than it should be.

Nevets Crimsonwing.5271:

Fay.2357:

Dalent.9358:

MAGpie.7962:

Gaile Gray.6029:

Ascended Drop Rates
We’ve noticed some changes to ascended drop rates that are below what we were expecting.

If you tell a computer, 10%, it will give you 10%. If you tell it, 1%, it will give you 1%. Please tell me, how you can “EXPECT” less than the value YOU put in? Are you kidding me?

You know, I would respect you a lot more if you you man up for a change.

Except that’s not how that works. At all.

That’s absolutely how it works. There are many very complex systems in this game. RNG boxes are not one of them, so don’t try and white-knight by pretending that coding an RNG box takes any amount of skill or experience, because it doesn’t.

You literally just slap an RNG with a if check onto every item in the loot table. If RNG produces a number above a threshold, then it appears in the box. This is not complex, and saying that they ’didn’t expect rates to be this low’ is either flat out lying or admitting they literally don’t have the first clue of how either math or coding works.

Not saying you’re wrong but it’s crossed my mind more than once that their drop equations are more than RNG. Could be a multivariate function taking into account things as simple as magic find or as diverse as individual performance, chat during encounters, hours played etc.

If that’s the case, then it falls under the option of ‘flat out lying’, since it’s been stated repeatedly and loudly that stuff like magic find or amount of time played has no bearing on box drops unless otherwise explicitly stated (PvP reward track chests).

Dalent.9358:

MAGpie.7962:

Gaile Gray.6029:

Ascended Drop Rates
We’ve noticed some changes to ascended drop rates that are below what we were expecting.

If you tell a computer, 10%, it will give you 10%. If you tell it, 1%, it will give you 1%. Please tell me, how you can “EXPECT” less than the value YOU put in? Are you kidding me?

You know, I would respect you a lot more if you you man up for a change.

Except that’s not how that works. At all.

That’s absolutely how it works. There are many very complex systems in this game. RNG boxes are not one of them, so don’t try and white-knight by pretending that coding an RNG box takes any amount of skill or experience, because it doesn’t.

You literally just slap an RNG with a if check onto every item in the loot table. If RNG produces a number above a threshold, then it appears in the box. This is not complex, and saying that they ’didn’t expect rates to be this low’ is either flat out lying or admitting they literally don’t have the first clue of how either math or coding works.

So…….how about that reset night?

Valiant.8016:

I was under the impression that clones did not overwrite phantasms. Or at least, that was what MrPrometheus claimed in his YouTube guide to Mesmers.

If you have 3 phantasms, a clone will overwrite the oldest one. Otherwise, clones will overwrite an existing clone.

Xyonon.3987:

Alacrity uptime with 3 iAvengers is meant without any other skills like wells and ofc I tested it on an ally, not myself But good thinking, made the same mistake once too :P

Unless you tested it in a full party, your test is flawed. 3 iAvengers will provide alacrity to themselves and to that ally, making their cooldowns decrease by 40%. In a real situation, no iAvenger will ever actually receive alacrity, as you and your 4 party members will soak all the 5-target aoes that provide it.

Still broken today.

Tasty tasty salt.

For reference, that was a herald talking.

The biggest problem for thief is that they don’t scale with alacrity. This means that without alacrity they could be competitive, but other classes will gain a drastic amount of damage while thieves have no change.

Really, Anet just needs to implement alacrity and chill affecting initiative recharge rates already. This should have been done a long time ago (for chill anyway), and is even more important now that there’s a positive counterpart to chill.

Could be a buggy swordsman?

kleym.2340:

Happens because you jump and get immobilize in the air so you cant do anything, prove it

Not true.

Still bugged today.

All invites are up to date.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Conditions-for-FOTM/first#post5753345

Illusions is key in lowering the cooldown of F5 to allow for the permanent quickness/alacrity rotation. Without it, you end up with substantial downtime when CS is still cooling down.

UnbentMars.9126:

Fay.2357:

spoj.9672:

Phantasms dont die anymore so yeah.

Obviously, but that doesn’t make my rough math wrong. You won’t have 3 swordsmen up 100% of the time because there’s ramp up time on summoning them, and that sacrifices higher party alacrity uptime which almost definitely outweighs the higher dps of swordsman over avenger.

Additionally, my point still stands. Even in an absolutely perfect scenario for chrono with 3 swordsmen 100% of the time and an absolutely ludicrous personal dps value, you’re still doing dps that makes you look like a little kid compared to engineer.

Then you obviously aren’t playing a mesmer right. A chronomancer can do a kitten ton of personal damage and alacrity affects them just as much as the rest of the group (more actually since there’s a trait to double the duration of self-applied alacrity)

Unfortunately, you’re totally wrong. Alacrity has almost no effect at all on Mesmer dps, because Mesmer dps is non-cooldown reliant. Once phantasms are up, our highest dps is to simply autoattack (technically I think blurred frenzy is like 1% higher, but burning it as much as possible will make you lose more dps when you have to dodge instead of just using BF). This is affected by quickness obviously, but not alacrity at all.

Additionally, I’m rather curious as to where you’re getting all this massive personal damage from. Mesmer sword auto is by far the worst melee dps auto in the game, not even considering that most classes have substantial dps boosts from cooldown skills as well. I certainly hope you’re not trying to imply the use of shatters for sustained dps…

Other fun things to note: the trait increases personal alacrity duration by a factor of 1.5, not doubling it. Additionally, playing properly as a chrono means that you and the rest of your party will have 100% uptime on alacrity, so that trait only makes it easier for you to maintain it anyway.

spoj.9672:

Phantasms dont die anymore so yeah.

Obviously, but that doesn’t make my rough math wrong. You won’t have 3 swordsmen up 100% of the time because there’s ramp up time on summoning them, and that sacrifices higher party alacrity uptime which almost definitely outweighs the higher dps of swordsman over avenger.

Additionally, my point still stands. Even in an absolutely perfect scenario for chrono with 3 swordsmen 100% of the time and an absolutely ludicrous personal dps value, you’re still doing dps that makes you look like a little kid compared to engineer.

NikeEU.7690:

Chrono does low DPS? What?

Chrono personal dps, as always, is by far the lowest dps of any class you’ll take on the raid. Obviously, your dps contribution including quickness and alacrity is massive, that’s why you’re there. Since one person in the raid will sacrifice some dps for boss control from toughness, it makes sense to have that person be the one with the lowest personal dps.

If you’re actually disputing that chrono dps is awful…lol. Let’s do some bearbow math!

Assume: You have 3 swordsmen up 100% of the fight (hint: this won’t even remotely be true)
Assume: Each swordsman attacks for 9k every 3 seconds (hint: this won’t be true either)
Assume: You do as much dps as your 3 swordsmen combined (hint: lolololol)

With these absolutely insanely favorable assumptions, your total dps is 18k. This is drastically lower than even conservative estimates for what a condie engineer does…without alacrity and quickness. There is absolutely no way to argue that chrono has high personal dps.

Chrono. You already do low damage and are primarily there for quickness/alacrity, which means your raid sacrifices less damage from you than from any other class. Additionally, boss control makes it easier to correctly place your well combo for team buffing.

As long as you keep donating 10 bucks a month, they couldn’t care less about how unhappy you are, because it obviously hasn’t affected your tendency to give them money.

Mogar.9216:

lol I play a zerk mesmer and I can’t remember last time I one shot anyone or been one shotted by another mesmer. If you want to kitten about 1 shot I have been 1 shotted by DH trap twice since patch with the DH not even there lol.

Can’t say I’ve seen it happen to a Mesmer, but twice in one match while I was bunkering a point, my DH dumped traps on my point and left. The enemy thief engaged on me and got literally instakilled by the traps I was standing on. Twice this happened. I had to chuckle.

Right now, I’m using eagle runes because they’re cheap. Even though I have 4 wells on my bar almost 100% of the time, chrono runes aren’t worth it because quickness just doesn’t benefit me all that much, and if I want to do my full buff combo, I’ve got close to perma-quickness anyway.

I use energy sigils on every weaponset I have because I use them all in WvW, which means energy sigils. They’re not optimal for PvE damage though, so that is something to consider. The other sigil is a bit variable. Some of my weapons have bloodlust, some air, some something else I think. If you want to be optimal, you’ll want to get force sigils (pricey). If not, get what you feel works best.

My ign is not displayed here, pm me if you want it.

If you need reflects, toss on inspiration and focus. If you don’t, stick with domination and sword. You’ll want to change on the fly depending on the situation.

Teutos.8620:

Fay.2357:

Celestial is a poor choice. The build has little to no condie pressure that would even be noticed in a fight against normal comps, and celestial only works for condie pressure if you have might anyway, which this build doesn’t generate. Imo, helseth just ran a poorly optimized version of my build.

Fay.2357:

Granted, the actual comp he was fighting was a bunch of tanky builds, it doesn’t take the tankiest build in the world to stay alive against that.
Also granted, swapping to a semi-bunker that does semi-bad damage against a team of tanky builds isn’t exactly the brightest decision I’ve ever seen made.

You know, you are always criticizing, but can’t remember the last time, I actually saw something constructive from you.

How about adding sharing your “wisdom” and suggesting some option including the benefit it provides?

You must not be looking very hard.

Anyway, I’ve already posted my bunker build, and explained how it works. If you paid much attention, you’d know that.

A better choice instead of going semi-bunker would have been to go full condie against oRNG. Their entire team comp had very little group condie cleanse, and would have melted to the condie pressure + cc that condie chrono can do. It would have been prudent to probably switch at least one other person to condie as well, since that’s the main weakness of their comp.

lol

/15characters

nearlight.3064:

Fay.2357:

nearlight.3064:

In twitch chat helseth briefly discussed his reasons for picking cele. Apparently he can sit at 25 might a lot of the time somehow (maybe through tempest fire overloads or herald might or something?) and he didn’t feel as though his survivability needed to be any higher considering how often he died when playing it. I’m still not sure if that reasoning is sound, but I thought I’d post it here to keep us informed.

Granted, the actual comp he was fighting was a bunch of tanky builds, it doesn’t take the tankiest build in the world to stay alive against that.

Also granted, swapping to a semi-bunker that does semi-bad damage against a team of tanky builds isn’t exactly the brightest decision I’ve ever seen made.

To be fair, he did way better against oRNG on his tanky build compared to his shatter build based on the three games he played against them, but I think the main ace in the hole for oRNG is that they simply adapted and rotated better than TCG did after the first game, which I think is more due to how they have better coordination, instead of TCG just listening to helseth for all of their rotations. oRNG also had better condi pressure between the cele necro, druid, and condi rev too, which may have tipped the balance in their favor, especially since most of the new cele bruisers in this meta aren’t running as much AoE cleanse as they used to (tempest without shout runes/cleansing water, druid has bad cleanse, scrapper has only heal turret really).

Anyway thats what I thought about his mesmer usage tactically. A bunker/support build would work well in a 2-point comp, but not a 3-point comp, meaning that teams with higher mobility can just outrotate the support builds and avoid the even numbered teamfights where something like a well chronomancer would have a huge advantage.

Yeah, I’m sure he personally did better in fights, but it was a tactical failure because of how their team comp actually functioned (or didn’t function, as the case may be).

Just encountered this myself, definitely still occurring.

nearlight.3064:

In twitch chat helseth briefly discussed his reasons for picking cele. Apparently he can sit at 25 might a lot of the time somehow (maybe through tempest fire overloads or herald might or something?) and he didn’t feel as though his survivability needed to be any higher considering how often he died when playing it. I’m still not sure if that reasoning is sound, but I thought I’d post it here to keep us informed.

Granted, the actual comp he was fighting was a bunch of tanky builds, it doesn’t take the tankiest build in the world to stay alive against that.

Also granted, swapping to a semi-bunker that does semi-bad damage against a team of tanky builds isn’t exactly the brightest decision I’ve ever seen made.

It depends on how bunkery the mesmer is, and this can be a bit hard to determine. If you’re talking my bunker build (full wells, sentinel amulet/melandru runes)…there’s absolutely no chance of you killing it solo unless the person playing it is incompetent. Treat it as a hard bunker, and move on. It also won’t kill you unless you try and stand on the point with it and don’t really heal at all, the damage it does is very poor. You definitely were eating a lot of unnecessary damage.

That being said, there are openings, but you sorta have to make them yourself. You can’t break evades, but you can break blocks in several ways. A heavy light proc on deflecting shot is an unblockable interrupt, and that will knock us out of the shield block. Same deal with the traited trap daze, that’s unblockable as well. You can use those to try and open up a burst opportunity while we’re rotating through the shield block. This isn’t going to help you kill them solo still, but it’s a great way to open up burst windows so that your team can take them down in a larger fight.

Celestial is a poor choice. The build has little to no condie pressure that would even be noticed in a fight against normal comps, and celestial only works for condie pressure if you have might anyway, which this build doesn’t generate. Imo, helseth just ran a poorly optimized version of my build.

lol

/15characters

Kobeathris.3645:

Fay.2357:

If you did literally zero dps but performed your role of providing alacrity and quickness flawlessly, you’re by far the very best choice a group has as their last player.

Ultimately, due to how Mesmer conditions go, you’re not going to be able to do damage that even approaches what condie engie/ranger are able to do. Whether it’s better or worse than power sw/sh….I’m not really sure, but it’s not going to be particularly impressive either way. Just remember that your first priority is pumping alacrity and quickness, with everything else being secondary.

Also, the toughness scaling doesn’t really kick in until 70+. It’s only in the very high levels that the enormous gap exists between power and condie due to the scaling. Quite honestly, unless you have a really good reason otherwise, I’d just avoid those levels entirely. There’s not actually any substantial reason to do them other than to say you’ve been there.

If the primary goal is pushing alacrity and quickness, would we be better off using commander’s gear over assassin/berserker? Or is quickness uptime already good enough that the extra boon duration isn’t needed?

Edit to add- something like this:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhAQNAseWncfClfi9fC2fCUrhlejyMAugMC91itZreUb1XF-TBCBQB4TfAEV+BOzPIU9nzoEEAPCgss/QAODAkC4rxAA-e

If a herald is in the party pulsing the facet of nature for 50% boon duration, you can maintain 90% uptime on quickness without any other source of boon duration, which makes getting it on gear unnecessary.

Ultimately, high level fractals are so niche and pointless atm, I’d highly recommend not getting any gear specifically for them. Maybe in a year when anet figures out that the HoT update for fractals was an unmitigated disaster and changes something.

Working as intended, well of precog is a stunbreaker, it must go on full cd if interrupted.

This bug had largely cleared up for a while, but it seems to be back with a vengeance.

The fastest way to clear the bug is to use the emote /no. I got really good at doing that quick in the past, might have to learn it again.

I’ve marked you two down, thanks for your interest. Will the weekly times I posted work for both of you?

Re: FA Transfers

This is all still unknown atm. I’m just hoping that Anet will open things back up, and that’s pretty much the most we can do. While moving the raid to a low tier server is a potential option, at least half of the people are already on FA, and a low tier server isn’t particularly fun to play on as an organized group due to the utter lack of other groups. The BLs are empty enough on FA, let alone a lower tier server.

I’m hoping that as time goes on, the BLs will pick up in activity to be actually decent to play on, so I’ve been spending some time roaming around in them to familiarize myself with the layout and paths, since they’re very different in setup and complexity compared to the old ones.

If you did literally zero dps but performed your role of providing alacrity and quickness flawlessly, you’re by far the very best choice a group has as their last player.

Ultimately, due to how Mesmer conditions go, you’re not going to be able to do damage that even approaches what condie engie/ranger are able to do. Whether it’s better or worse than power sw/sh….I’m not really sure, but it’s not going to be particularly impressive either way. Just remember that your first priority is pumping alacrity and quickness, with everything else being secondary.

Also, the toughness scaling doesn’t really kick in until 70+. It’s only in the very high levels that the enormous gap exists between power and condie due to the scaling. Quite honestly, unless you have a really good reason otherwise, I’d just avoid those levels entirely. There’s not actually any substantial reason to do them other than to say you’ve been there.

The real question is what isn’t wrong with stomping right now. The whole mechanic is bugged beyond belief, regardless of the particulars of how it’s done. Anet really borked it good with HoT, and so far haven’t even acknowledged that there’s a problem unfortunately.

FA is locked for transfers, and has been for a while, and you’re saying we’re stacking harder? What a load of rubbish.

Mak.2657:

To all:
uncheck “Allow Skill Retargeting” in general options (”Combat/Movement" section) and try to test.

I’ve never had that enabled, and my stomps still bug out regularly.

Just wanted to resurrect this thread because of how hilariously broken stomping is. Time after time last night I’d execute a stomp…and nothing. Lost a couple fights because of this bug. I didn’t even have quickness on me these times, those ones always bug out.