Guild Wars 2

would make mesmer way too OP. If they do decide to go with the idea, they’d have to make illusion skills have much longer CDs ( & this is coming from a person that plays mesmer..)

(It’s TF2 all over again).

I use a GreatSword on my mesmer and currently have no problems with it. You know… GS is great for making a tone of clones since you’ve got both mirror blade and phantasm beserker which does a great deal of damage if you build the traits right. The only other clone that does more damage than the phantsm beserker is the phantasm warden but it’s not as mobile compare to the phantasm beserker. (hit around 4-5 K every time i summon phantasm beserker at lvl 80).

Ty Colin for the straight forward replies. Indeed, the major problem with some dungeon mobs is that a few of these bosses have large HP pool with poor mechanics. While it’s true that most difficult dungeons are absolutely beatable a rare few of these dungeons were also a bit towards the degree of super extreme difficulty (ie. AC breeders was just brutal). I’ve observed that (a couple of things here):

1) Most explorable dungeons are designed to fit with the balance scale of a “lvl 80 player” – meaning if a player runs an explorable dungeon at the max lvl & with party members also at max level he/she should find the difficulty lvl just about right.

2) Generally the proper difficulty comes down to the mob having proper mechanics; glitched mechanics such as – letting the mob stand there and do nothing is often the key tip-scale of a dungeon’s level of difficulty.

IMO there’s probably a better need for free traits reset, especially in every point of a dungeon – the skill traits reset should be free in dungeons.

I think high cost wavepoints is to account for those higher lvl players who simply thinks walking through a zone once is enough – sometimes walking through a zone twice gives a new experience of that zone since you may have missed a DE or a vista the first time around. Personally, I don’t mind high wave-point costs because all the high lvl dungeons drop a bunch of regular items that are worth close to 1 silver each (ie. Ran the CoF EXP dungeon just now & I earned around 30 silver from that instance).

GW2… a very good game with unique and well-designed skill system, beautiful terrains, and epic battle-grounds. The fundamental requirements for an excellent game are all there for this game to become extremely successful. Only time will tell.

However, let’s get down to business – because this game is still a work in progress & far from being what it is capable off – do to major MAJOR game play design polishing issues (heavily accounted for the balancing aspects). Let’s get to these issues.

A) Dungeons Difficulty Balance.

1) Bosses & mobs either hit you for too hard or too less. The dumbest thing that happens in a dungeon when boss mobs are overly difficult is that players die constantly, and they’re doing “hit-die-revive RELAYS” from the wave-point back to the boss so that the boss doesn’t re-heal. Or, when a boss mob glitches out and so everyone in the party simply spams skills at the mob and wait 2 mins for it’s HP to drop from 100-0 – large hp pool without good mechanics = boring.

2) Major mob telegraph issues during fights (predictability varies too much from one type of mob to another – on some mob it’s too slow while others its too fast). A player often goes down without knowing why because the telegraph never showed (or was blurred out by the graphic effects compounding on top of one and another).

3) Most rewards you get from story mode are junk, while the only reward that’s good in explorable modes are simply the coins. This results in the fact that there’s really no point to run explorable mode until lvl 80, and so what it does is it encourage people to power-lvl to 80 so their cost-benefit for doing an explorable dungeon would be more balanced (not constantly breaking armor and wasting money to fix it). That takes away all the fun of dungeons from anyone who’s not 80.

4) Bosses & mobs have really terrible physical interaction with its terrains & players, it seems like they’ve pasted a beautiful picture in the background while the mob & you are just fighting in this void platform on top of it (like checkers). One panic I miss the most is when a mob crutches and you know it’s going to ‘leap’ at you – or when you see a dragon’s hand do a big swipe and everyone gets thrown back; these mechanics simply are none-existence in GW2 (and that really kills it for a player in PVE fights when the mob are like stoned & don’t have any specific movement patterns).

5) Mob agros. Enough said (I’m so confused by how it works… between me and my clones hitting, we hit the same time and its 50-50 as to whether it picks the clone or me). Y’all can probably fill me in on the exact issue cuz I clearly have no idea “how I get a mob to agro me” after someone’s hit it first.

B) World Events:

A) Repating a DE means nothing, since every-time something is successfully defended nothing gets accomplished (especially at Orrr around lvl 80), it’s really pointless to go on and take back a terrirtoy when it doesn’t give players any rewards for like “holding” the point and such. I have literally not done any DE’s more than twice because I feel like nothing is accomplished – just keep on going on to higher level stuffs. Case & Point: It becomes really a mentality where we keep moving on but never think about what we’ve done, and what impact we’ve made that will effect our future — because it doesn’t (like the past has nothing to do with the future).

B) Primitive grouping system. There’s a lot of communicatation going on in small grouping, but when it’s a large group ie. 30-40 people – having no party simply makes it difficult to interact with one and another. I would prefer if they implement the same party system as found in Warhammer where if a player walks into a zone – they’ll be ask to join an ‘event party’.

Many have suggested ideas of how to fix these issues, but I personally think that there are so many ways of doing it that I feel there’s no need to repost some of the solution suggestions. I’m simply summarizing the major issues in PVE that Anet hopefully addresses – because these issues are mostly very well-known & (dare I say it)
‘annoying’ to have to deal with in-game.

Instances would be a nice idea, but I’d prefer if they simple work on the boss mechanics & giving players more skill customization options – if the combat is fun, then it won’t really matter what the boss looks like or how many people are fighting it.

Whether an instance exists or not, imagine if for example the Shadow Behemoth actually moves through the forest and destructs the trees and people in its path (not to the point that people instantly dies, but a lot of damage so that people automatically knows you can’t let it ‘step’ on you). Or imagine that the Shadow Behemoth throws NPC’s at players. I think the feeling of there being a lack of hardcore PVE bosses (@ TC) is really because the bosses you fight either kill you in one shot, or it’s so easy that you can simply sit there the whole fight and spam skills and you won’t die, due to major mechanics balancing issues.Again the major issue goes back to this fact that a lot of bosses & mobs posses majorly unbalanced mechanics as well as boring mechanics.

I’m very surprised that most people aren’t raging about it – the dragon is like the last boss in the game yet it was probably the most unpolished dungeon boss out of all 8 dungeons. I hope Anet changes it, because there’s no way people are going to say “man, that was fun”. Standing there and press 1 button will be voted as boring 10-10 times.

It’s either of the two things: Completely bugged or extremely poorly polished.

to simply let players ‘freely customize’ their skills would take too much inefficient balancing work so IMO Anet’s not going to do it (their current skill system is very well structured —-——> way, while the whole ‘allow players to customize from a list of weapon skills’ is <———- way). I know a lot of us ‘really’ want to have more skills in our weapons, but by just saying – ‘unlock hundreds of skills for me’ is simply not the way to go about introducing new skills ‘diligently’.

DrakeWurrum.6049:

I don’t think that wielding something just in the off-hand really makes as much sense, actually. It’s a cool idea, but I like to see the “main hand” as your character’s dominant hand (and we all just happen to be right-handed visually).

Yah, I think I realize now that my pervious example wasn’t such a good idea. Might also confuse people as to thinking whether they have a weapon on main-hand… or off-hand – the current setup is indeed already pretty clear. I was just throwing out ideas which is at core related to making new weapon skills by having new weapons set combinations.

Or another idea is that you can combine the ‘property’ of an off-hand weapon with its paired main-hand weapon, such that the main hand weapon receives a whole set of new skills. IE:

- Combing the property of an off-hand torch with a 1-H sword gives the sword 2 new skills (toggle to switch on or off).

- Combing the property of an off-hand focus with a sceptor on the main-hand gives the scepter 2 new skills (toggle to switch on or off).

Different off-hands will each have their own ‘synergy’ effect, or in other words each off-hand will give a main-hand an additional set of weapon skills (activated on a toggle – so a player now actually gets 5 skills from their 1H main-hand weapon instead of 3 – 1 skill consistently the same being the auto-attack). I think this idea along with the TC’s idea would basically & nearly double the weapon skills in GW2 and make it more like GW1 in terms of the amount of ‘skill options’ to choose from (Summary: 2 new off-hand skills for each lone-1H weapon on the main-hand [TC’s idea], and another 2 new skills on the main-hand for each unique pair of off-hand weapon activated by toggle [my idea]).

The only direction I see to go with new skills in the future is with adding these new skills to existing weapons, considering the fact that:

A) Creating a new weapon would make a huge impact on the game balance (I see the mesmer weapons have already mostly covered all the roles – staff -> support/crowd control, sword -> tank/melee, greatsword – range/dps, sceptor -> conditions).

B) Creating new weapon will mean creating its corresponding “exotic items”, which will take the artists a lot more time. It’s for looks, so really if a person says “I want to make my sword look like a hammer” – that’s what ‘skins’ are for right? Whackky, awesome, and cool weapon styles (Skins ~ Fun, Actual Weapons ~ Class skill properties).

C) The Main-hand weapons for each class have already been carefully thought out (imagine an elementalist with a hammer – that would be cool, but again it will defeat the whole purpose of ‘class’ [seperation]), so in that sense it’s not really necessary at all to add weapons currently to the weapons stash in GW2.

For PVE, I think when a group of people are in the same DE, as upon entering the orange ring the system should prompt a message asking whether the player would like to join the party. So then, you get a large group of people (this I’m reffering to a new party system for DEs mostly) being able to know where the group is.

Like if I really like this group but I want to go buy stuff, I can know where everyone’s headed to instead of going and then having to walk miles again to find new groups.

EDIT: The size limit of the party should range anywhere from 30-40 people, and the map only shows one dot which locates the “majority” of players in this group(two dots if the groups are evenly divided). EX) If 40 people were in this group, and later on 20 of the 40 scattered – you’d still be able to find the location of ‘the group’ (the remaining 20 people). And the minimum # of players required to be counted still as group is 5 (anywhere above four is a “raid group”, below it is a private party group). Again, it only tells you where the group is at, but not what’s happening at that location (given choice to go back or go somewhere else).

That’s a really great idea. I mean, the weapon ‘types’ are already enough, so instead of adding new weapons to get new skills, have this idea of being able to do more with weapon mixing between off-hand and main-hand. Referring to what the TC & others have said, start with: no weapons on off-hand = 2 new skills. Then later on, if more skills need to be added, they can continue with this method of adding combinations to the main-hand /off-hand – for example: every 1-handed weapon can go on off-hand or main-hand, and by swapping it it will give that weapon combination a whole new 5 skill set. So, that will literally provide a future capacity of doubling the skills in this game (more customization options).

Again, I think the TC’s suggestion is the best suggestion for adding new skill (because it combines the need for “weapon desires” [what everyone wants] as well as giving more skills in the process).

Hello guild recruiters,

I am look for a guild that does ‘cooperative’ hardcore PVE stuffs, such as lots of explorable dungeons or explorations to the dangerous zones of Tyria – preferably in a group.

Personality wise, I am friendly in nature. Very chill’ed in terms of following instructions and taking a given role in a group. Loves to take on challenges like spending 2-3 hours figuring out a dungeon sequence, even if it means having to go through lots of failure tries to accomplish the task.

Here’s also something different with this post…

I am also ‘looking for’ a guild which posses “players who don’t shy away from doing difficult tasks”. If this is also the meta that your guild posses, then I think we can definitely work together >=P

If you are interested and would like to contact me, please mail me in-game @ Acc. Name: Fluffy Doe.

Related Info – Profile:
Class: Mesmer.
Level: Currently lv. 80.
Server Status: (Willing to switch over to any guild servers).

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I hope a this point, you’ve understand what I have to offer, & I hope you’ve found a suitable role for me to chip’ in for your guild.

That’s all. Thank you all for taking the time to read through my post.

Regards,

FD.

It’s a descriptive error. Even though it doesn’t show 4.8 sec(which is 20%+20% = 40% -> 0.4 X 8 = 4.8 sec), stacking Greatsword Training & Illusion Celerity do indeed give your MB a 4.8 sec CD. It’s just that the CD number “in the description” remains at 6.5 seconds despite the fact that the proper CD number should show 4.8 sec.

I can confirm that for stacking the traits MB and GT, but as for other CD traits combination they are held in seperate cases in terms of whether they do or don’t stack – and I believe that’s how it works.

Iunno if this has to do with the lag or what, but my Mesmer attack with either a sceptor or staff seems to be slower than my Engineer’s bullet – but the real worse part is this: At times my purple ball (from my scepter) can fail to register the hit on the mob. Like, it will travel to the mob but do no damage on the mob.

I’ve also noticed that the purple thing I shot out sometimes just disappears “half way” in mid-air, and other times the purple ball simple doesn’t even come out. This is also true for my Mesmer’s Greatsword but not as bad (ie. where the purple beam disappears at times when I’m casting it multiple times continuously).

I’ve never had this problem using a Rifle or Bow, just with bigger and slower air projectiles/attacks (and I play other games like Dota 2 and TF2 fine with no lag).

I’ve noticed these bugs too when I play my mesmer.

Also, the Phantasmal Haste skill description is very misleading. It says “phantasm recharges 20% faster”, but it’s actually the attack speed rate of the phantasms which gets decreased in reality, not the “phantasm’s skill CDs” .

Link: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Phantasmal_Haste

Other notes on Mesmer Traits:
1) The Illusionar Persona needs to show stack values (like shown on the wiki Page below)
Link: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Illusionary_Persona

2) Illusionary Elasticity: Notes that need to be included (currently non-existing)
a) Affects Magic Bullet: 4th target suffers Confusion.
b) Does not affect clones using Winds of Chaos.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Illusionary_Elasticity

3) Not all skills that reduces the recharge rate of illusion-summoning skills work.

IE. http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Illusionists_Celerity

Most of the bug that I experienced in-game can be found in wiki’s Mesmer-skill trait page. I can confirm that most of the reported bugs/notes there are 99% true.

EDIT: I consider any skill that has a description which can mislead the user using the skill – a bug in the game.