Guild Wars 2

For those who play mesmer; I was really hoping for more. Everything for mesmer was purely bug fixing except for the AoE stability and condition removal which will probably never see the light of day; mantra’s are still too clunky to be effective. The very minor reduction in cooldown for the scepter is noted. I for one do not see it as a big benefit there, but I would like feedback from others. Ultimately I consider Mesmer the most underwhelmingly buffed class this update. Anyone else for least buffed candidate? Rather curious.

As far as I am concerned there was never any question here. Of course players want houses and I have seen posts stating they are working on this along with guild halls but that this wasn’t a priority at the time (I believe it was Regina who stated this). So that leaves us with the most requested item….sometime. Later. I would prefer even a general idea of when this feature will become available i.e. 2014 etc. Would get me excited for housing to come in. Honestly I would nuke all my characters now if it brought guild halls to the game tomorrow but others may prefer other upgrades. I just picture epically big structures in their own location/instance, maybe a fourth area in the Mist war that has its own creatures outside the hall you can romp with, possible guild hall battles again /drool was so much fun back in the day… but even having a kitchen table would be something new to get excited about!

I agree with many comments that the Ele is now underpowered from what it was meant to be and I also agree that the mesmer mantra’s are a weak attempt at buffing. But lets keep a smile on while we look at things. There is still time for some stronger, more reasonable changes to happen for Mesmer than tiny mantra buffs, and Ele can still have its moment with a decent buff to bring it up to par with the more defensible classes, even if thats just a DPS buff to some skills. For other classes, I am not sure as most are doing fairly well. I think thieves need more support in areas outside stealth to give them more variety and maybe nerf down the permastealth aspect just a bit. Warriors, I don’t know what to say; I have to agree with the trollers that they get way too much love around here. I will abstain from commenting on the other classes and wait and see what buffs can be done. I would absolutely love to see traits adjusted in strength and some elites buffed. Ultimately what I think we want to see are some strong buffs to support and defensive play among each of the classes (except warrior, you get plenty of defensive love already!) which would concentrate people into more balanced builds and allow for more hybrid play if this was done. I am not looking of course for a call back to the holy trinity days but I think people should be able to focus spec into other strategies.

Actually I kind of feel this will happen. There is room for at least two areas for Tengu and I think area wise it fits and a matching level 15 area could easily be made so I also hope it gets incorporated. Besides Tengu I like the idea of kodan. What do people feel about naga as a possible race versus Forgotten?

You have some good points here but the issue isn’t really time it’s whether the server is getting hosed or not. Instead we should be reducing the pain of the encounter based on damage to Tequatl or something similar.

I am going to defend the developers here: it’s asking a lot. Give them time guys. The best thing is to help with focus. My vote is guild halls. But I am for anything they bring.

Point here: why can’t this event scale down in difficulty? I thought scaling was supposed to control difficulty?

Osi I am not interested in the original poster I am interested in the post itself. People like you see a topic bumped and read and respond to it. You did as did others. I find old posts revived generates more interest than new ones. It’s too bad you fail to see that and question others rather pointlessly. For you who are interested in the topic of the conduit though I still feel cheated I can’t get this item when others got it so easy a year ago and reaped the benefits and still do. At least permanent contracts have slim hopes of getting RNG conduit forget it.

Indigo: Isles of Janthir, Janthir Bay or else blue: Deldrimor Front. I would love to see more of the stone dwarves and I want to see some old-school White Mantle in the mix there! Also, Zoltreez: AGREED!

Hello Osi,
Am I committing a faux paus by responding to old threads? There are thousands of threads in existence already, I just thought some comments here were still pertinent. I will be honest, if people feel old threads are best left to lie dead in dustbins, by all means correct me so I know not to make this mistake in the future.

Andykay, how I wish your remarks were true. I read about them shortly after they went off the market and leaped in price and coveted one ever since. I am so ticked at how long this has been left off the market! I didn’t know you could get one, stupid me didn’t read enough at game launch. Now I am mad every day I use the forge, I love doing stuff in Rata Sum and the only reason I stick around Lions Arch is for the benefit of the forge. So I bitterly rue that they have not re-released this formula after an entire year. A year! Dust off? More like shelved forever.

Thank you for your honesty Pyro. To be honest, I haven’t played much lately because I am very ticked off at the moment about my Mesmer’s ability to play builds other than shatter or raw damage. I don’t like how our options have thinned; we are supposed to be a flexible class in this game, why I chose Mesmer to start. I am sick of playing builds with no finesse, no alternate strategy. I like playing to the beat of my own drum; and for me that means making use of other game mechanics. I believe I can be effective killing things using buffs from boons, damage from conditions, and thinking outside the box. I want the developer’s in this game to recognize that weakening builds that celebrate thinking outside the box is totally the wrong attitude. Direct damage is so obvious its lame; I want to win through cunning. I miss glamour builds, and I have always hated the built-in limits to boon duration especially. I still want to use it though. I like buffing boons to increase damage and then turn around and empower allies or buff myself to be effective. I just wish someone would give me the build that will do that the best at this point, because right now I am actually rather weak until I find my focus.

Thanks for this reply Deathcon! Fabulous you remembered, can’t wait to see what people are posting now. I figured perplexity might be popular, but I am loving the perma swiftness until they decide to throw us a bone and give us a real swiftness utility skill. I like emphasis on a defense/offense build, and would love to have a high damage/high boon support build that offers great synergy that way.

Pyroatheist.9031:

I’ma ctually thinking a tank build using this armor will be a reincarnation potential for my immortal build. We will see.

I know this is an old thread to bump, but man I hate all the bazillions of threads to have to dig through when you create one more. My question though is directed at Pyroatheist. Have you had a chance to test this to see if its viable as a revival of your immortal build? I am very interested in the Dire set and also with Traveler’s runes. Is a set incorporating this feasible? I would love to have a decent build that balances strong boon support with condition damage incorporating traveler’s but not sure about the setup. Some words of wisdom here would be great.

I like your setup here for the mantra’s and whatnot. Since you are going to have boons going on along with an obvious preference for condition damage, I suggest you spec into 6 runes of the traveler and replace the focus with the torch. You don’t need temporal curtain to buff your speed with the runes, which also buff both boon duration and condition damage, along with perma speed buff, so you don’t have to rely on focus here. Remember, if you go with torch you can use the powerful effect of Cleansing Conflagration to remove conditions from yourself on torch skill activation replacing Crippling Discipation not to mention reducing the recharge of your torch skills. Since that gives you more confition removal through torch skill activation you could replace Mender’s Purity with Persisting Images to buff the life of your phantasms to increase your damage output.

Tutankhamun, I agree with the visibility being way too obvious with lots of time to perform interrupts of some kind. The charge time is a problem, but I am concerned that lowering it will fail to resolve the issue that these are suboptimal skills that provide modest utility at a cost of you being out of commission for several seconds to perform these skills. Other skills are either really fast or at least fast and don’t take you away from the important job of killing your target; mantra’s do. The power of the skills themselves needs to be stronger, or as Gizuko pointed out there needs to be additional effects that occur on startup of the skill, i.e. when using concentration to give yourself stability, maybe it procs aegis when you first start casting. They need more power to the skills, so they can maintain their current mechanics without taking too much away from the active battle as its happening. Remember, these are chargeup skills; in every game I have ever played a charged up skill was powerful. These are not. That’s why I think its a matter of amplitude, rather than just recharge. If you pay alot up front, you should get something really good, thats my philosophy and thats how these skills should run.

Karl McLain, firstly I want to thank you for your update, giving us tidbits I think helps players get a feel for where things are going. On that note, please promise us you will do more than buff those two mesmer mantra’s that were mentioned for that class! I would bet you every piece of gold and gems my characters have and delete them all if I am wrong, that if those are the only buffs you do to mantra’s every mesmer will feel the patch was pointless.

Mantra’s need more than a couple aoe buffs to two skills to bother making them effective. Please give us more than that. Make all of them area effect skills, or reduce their recharges to allow the long cast times to have something to offset their absurd ease of interruption.

Warfare is an art that occurs on the balls of ones feet; you can’t make a guy who stands there for several seconds chanting any more than a sitting duck no matter how hard you try. I find the idea some posit of making mantra’s OP a joke; if you massively reduced their recharge or made them all pbaoe in addition to their normal effect they would still only be good not great. So please don’t fall short. Oh, final word from me: for the love of Benji PLEASE buff phantasmal mage on the torch. I am sick of that skill’s damage factor literally one order of magnitude lower than any other phantasms. Hint: give it better condition damage. Torment would be a thought, every other class has a direct method of applying it that got it except Mesmer.

Mosharn.8357:

This games balance is a freaking joke. Some classes got it so good then others its stupid. spvp/tpvp is basically who can abuse the most buffed class the most vs the other player playing the same class or the other most abused unimaginably buffed class. People cant play a class they want to play(ranger) because they plane out suck fat nuts. If you wana get any where you have to abuse the cheese fest skills classes have. Classes like super invis ‘’i still kill you in invis’’ mesmers or the ‘’condi in my sleep’’ necros. Or the supreme buffed engis that can throw every condi on you and burst you down at the same time. Not to mention this kitten skullcrack hb baby combo going on.

If you cared about balance anet this type of bs wouldn’t be in the game. Each month some class gets buffed so good everyone uses it and abuses it and the combos you buff up. There are so many high toughness/vit wars running around with the skull crack hb thing that they can noob hard and deal dmg since their target cant move. Stun breaker you say? i hope you have a stun breaker every 4 seconds.

I dont use the forums much because i actuly play the game. But when you listen to these forumwarriors and their bs you nerf and buff the wrong things to so many limits that it makes spvp/tpvp/wvw a nightmare for casuals/newbs and some vets.

Please use your brains before you do these so called balances. Getting real tired of fighting the same class players with the same 2 builds in wvw.

I have played a mesmer since basically launch. Mesmer’s NEVER succeed in killing people while invisible, most skills will reveal the mesmer if they attack and summoning a phantasm by the time your done your invis is up. We have only a few invisibility skills that last between 3-5 seconds and they have insane cooldown times of like 45 seconds to 90 seconds, only exception is The Prestige, which has a short duration and is a channeled skill so you can’t activate anything else at all without breaking stealth immediately. I am guessing you were one of those with a bad internet connection that suffered from the effects of culling, which is how some of the more famous mesmer players who have done YouTube video’s of taking on small zergs got famous, by relying on culling to increase the time it took to render their sprite and then going back into invis. That was a glitch and had nothing to do with skill, exploits don’t make players great. You probably experienced that. With culling removed your description of mesmer’s is simply incorrect. As for condi necro’s, I just think the recent buff to conditions has made them a bit overpowered for those that run that way. On the flip side I am also very tired of worn out classes. I just wish they hadn’t relied so much on direct damage build development while nerfing duration on boons and condition duration and other effects that were given limits compared to things like precision or power which simply scale endlessly. Some of us do things in creative ways; we shouldn’t be kitten ahead of time for it.

After reading the posts on this forum, I have come to an interesting conclusion: What people really want is not better teams, but better READERS. Think about some of the comments: I get better teams from gw2lfg.com. Why should it make a difference really? Because browsing the teams forces you to take the time to read the description and find groups that fit. In other words, the lfg tool needs to be able to force players to slow down and take their time with reading descriptions. I get the elitist hate on this forum, I feel similarly however a zerker run should fairly allow zerkers to search for like-minded people.

Instead of hating on them, we need to make this tool more powerful in forcing people to read. I think a validation option needs to be added to the tool where people who want to be selective can prevent joins until party members validate the individual. Or else there needs to be some aspect to the tool that at the very least forces people to slow down and take time to read through the team postings in game so they join the right group for them. I believe this can be done, it just requires some creative thinking in how the tool is used, mainly a brainstorm session perhaps? C’mon posters, lets focus on helping them figure out where this tool needs to go. No complaints, lets offer ideas.

Also I wanted to thank ArenaNet for declaring this tool as beta. It obviously needed foresight and I like they take the time to make the tools work right for the game and not just an overly convenient pickup and join tool.

chat.4062:

Something i m wonder, correct me if i m in a wrong way.

As mesmer alone ( mantra no trait), when charged i have 2 * 2.5 scd of stab for moc. Something i ll use in pvp against a stun warrior for example.

According that i m a wvwvw player in zerg ( bad guy, alone moc is underpowered 2*2.5 scd of stab is not enough to be offensive. But it s an aoe boon sharing, so i find 4 other nice mesmer : we stack 5*2.5=12.50 scd stab, 2 scd later 5*2.5=12.50 = perma stab?
It should be too OP, i think that it ll be as Line of focus for speed, you share stab but it s not stacking with the other stab. So in that case 5 mesmer, if boon give in prior group u can maintain perma stab but it s far too boring. I think you can t play 2 hours like that.

@ Fay : What i wish fot theese change

i let Mor with aoe cleanse, i give a finisher combo on charging ( use when your raid raid repack in order to rebuff ).
I change Moc completely : charging moc give you stab for 5 scd if no trait ( almost guard stab it s big up), traited charging moc give you 7.5 scd stab ( almost war stab ), u can even have better with boon duration. use your charge of moc apply random boon on you and your allies.

Use Mor, Moc and nul field should be interresting in raid, zerg as your role is to boon strip and give boons.

It s just ideas of medium random player. I assume that make a balance skill is hard but perhaps we can discuss.

I must disagree with you I think chat. Firstly, if its so boring to run perma stability, then no one is going to bother to run it. Which means its not OP. Secondly, How about we just get a group of 5 guardians together and share around stability that way if we are all so nice to share it. Or maybe spec for 3 mantra activations on a mesmer instead of two, and use signet to share stability after stacking it with everyone since 5 mesmers showed up. We can already do this, so I disagree its OP. Its not. You think sharing an effect on cast of mantra is overpowered? I am not going to bother diffusing your math, as having 5 people together with the same build is too unlikely. Even if it was common, we could limit it to say the effect only hits up to 3 people instead of 5. Either way, the argument is a very poor one; its useless in 1v1, sPvP since you aren’t likely to be going with large group aoe and in WvW enemy zergs can carry boon removal, or just bring their own to even the playing field. Saying a whole team is all the same class running duplicate builds for stacking just doesn’t fly. Oh, I almost forgot to mention, something I had to learn the hard way myself: boons have hard caps on them already. Certain boons won’t extend past x duration time, and further some boons don’t stack beyond a set amount, like oh stability maybe? That’s right, you can only have 3 stacks of stability and then you can’t stack no more. So the boons already are prevented from being OP by their own built in limits anyways.

“Empowering Mantras punishes you for using your mantras because you will want to keep them up.”

I wanted to comment on this post. I agree absolutely with this. Empowering mantra’s makes little sense when you consider the ways in which mantra’s are used and the type of build play people focus on with mantras. People use mantra’s for their defensive and support uses, not for their offensive power; utility skills are not good weapons. And I would never sacrifice utility slots for a small increase in damage, I need those too much for other things.

That was why in the thread started by developer Jonathon Sharp I suggested replacing the effect of Empowering Mantra’s with Mantra Mastery, and giving mantra mastery the ability instead to grant mantra’s aoe when you activate their effects. This way instead of one skill doing aoe stability, we get aoe effects for each mantra, either allies for defensive skills, or group damage from skills like mantra of pain. The long charge times, ease of interruption, and long recharges would still easily balance the use of these skills while giving us the needed utility these skills have desperately craved. For those who argue its too powerful, making mantra mastery a grandmaster trait should limit abusive specs for mantra skills, although master level I feel is good enough already.

Final Word: I get they are throwing mesmer’s a bone with this upcoming update, but compared to what they are giving the other classes, it lacks the most.

Avatara.1042:

Why are Elementalist cooldowns so long? Even the utility (6 to 0 keybound) skills have ridiculous cooldowns. 90 seconds for Armour of Earth???

Couldn’t agree with you more. But lets start with a few small things. I pointed out a possibility that I think would be a nice fix for mesmer’s with mantra’s, but I would also like to see feedback as well. I think the reason long utility cooldowns exist in ele is because they have 25 weapon skills to filter through instead of 10 like the rest of us….just saying. I agree Ele is very squishy class, perhaps a trait to increase the duration of some utility/defensive skills might balance the long recharge?

“Not only that, but mesmer’s passive playstyle makes it a bit too easy to play, so less HP would make them a bit harder to master.”

I wish people would stop going on about passive play! When a mesmer attacks mobs in pve 90% of the time they are all over the mesmer not his pets!!! The AI actually constantly reacquires the mesmer which makes little sense from trash mobs. Note that ranger pets actually hold agro as opposed to not! Also what about engineer turrets? Ranger spirit summons? Necromancer minions all of which constitute passive play? Be honest, your real complaint about the supposed ease of play only affects pvp style play because you find their main ability to disrupt player perception with clones to hide themselves irritating. Nevermind they were designed with this concept in mind and intended to utilize this as a primary form of combat! Please offer better ideas about adjustment then “their play style is too easy”. Conveniently you point out they are not top tier class yet you throw out the idea to nerf them anyways. Not very sporting.

As a long time Mesmer it’s nice we are focusing on a couple of mantras for buffs but can I make a better suggestion? Mantras are not going to be viable with their long cast times and recharge with ease of interruption. Instead why not simply move mantra masteries effect to empowered mantras and replace it with “mantras affect applies to up to 5 targets around the mantras target”. So a Mesmer with the trait mantra mastery could buff a player next to him with stability or hit 3 targets with mantra of pain making it useful for harder hits when traited. If its seen as powerful I suggest making this a grandmaster trait to keep it balanced.

As an additional aside, I have taken the liberty of being kind to other players by updating the gw2 wiki page at http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Boon_Duration to reflect the 90% cap. Hopefully I save some few individuals energy and time.

Thanks for everyone’s feedback! Yaki, have you tested these buffs for over 2 minutes in a closed environment? My feedback indicates there is a cap of some kind on duration lengths of boons. As for easier boon duration, lets be frank: not all players know this. Like me, many players wanted to spec out fully for boon duration to see what the playstyle was like and if it was viable to go beyond the “cap” as its been given to us. Some will waste resources because not even the wiki mentions ANYTHING about it people just had to find out the hard way.

At the very least, if we are going to give a hard limit to the buff itself, it should turn red when it hits 90 and stop going up, so we know its pointless to push it further, or is there a skill that reduces boon duration that I don’t know about to give a reason otherwise? Also condition duration and boon duration are very different. Boons by themselves don’t kill people, they don’t lend towards victory so anyone speccing it by itself will in the end not see success. I read a great post by Pyro who pointed out that someone with weak offensive power is not a threat and even a glass cannon has the option to simply ignore them if they lacked firepower. So I really don’t see the point people make in supporting a cap on it because even with none the game itself balances the use of boons. But I did ask for feedback, and so far I have received no good explanation against removing the cap, other than the lack of removal from Khisanth. A relevant point, but it sounds and feels unconvincing to me on the whole.

Thanks for your feedback Rhodoc! I wasn’t aware there was a max time limit cap. I am sure the time limit was instituted to prevent permanent boons from going into effect. I can understand not wanting 120 seconds of max 25 might stacks. The problem is people are being punished for speccing into boon duration. No one says, “gee, you can’t have more than 2500 power, as that would be OP.” Whether it is or isn’t, some of us care about dealing damage or dealing with incoming damage in more than the old hit him harder first paradigm. I would like to know if I stick 100 or 120 into this attribute that I can get that much out in some way even if limits are placed. I don’t know of any cap on condition damage for instance, and except for necromancers running lingering curse I can’t see any way to even hit the max cap on condition duration….I guess my rant comes down to the fact I don’t understand why the boon duration buff gets the most hate for feasibility out of the bunch?

I have been looking at one of the stats that saw some additional presence with the removal of magic find: boon duration. One of the factors I have been considering and thinking about is how to make good use of this stat. Originally I wanted to max out the stat to see what kind of support builds or strengthening factors I could use with this skill. However, in testing I have found that it is indeed “capped” invisibly at 90%. I have seen nothing on the wiki pages and only random player comments that have mentioned this. I would like an official response to boon duration: is it intended to have a cap at 90%? There are plenty of ways to push it well beyond this value at this time. So what was the purpose of giving us larger buffs through the rune of the traveler? Or how about platinum doubloons? I confess I am confused regarding this buff. Was it really intended to have a limit or is that a bug?

Also every stat is represented at the exotic level with boon duration under the Givers armor set, but it was never represented as an ascended accessory/back item/ring/anything ascended. Why was this attribute ignored when ascended options were intended to cover everything according to the September 3rd update?

Leviathan Scourge.1390:

They could simply stop making any new magic find items and leave the old ones as are but account bound so the people who want it could keep it. Instead they decided to TAKE from the players and remove the choice many of us have made.

Leviathan, I disagree with you because of one simple point: Advantage. Lets say having an all magic find gear gives you 100 magic find. You combine this with 300 for the account and another 100-150 for consumables in the more extreme cases. At the end of the day, no one who wasn’t there early on gets those things.

Its just like with the mystic forge conduit. It was a formula item that was available for about a month after release. Most of us weren’t even aware you could MAKE your own permanent mystic forge conduit that could be used again and again. Since then, those who made them have profited hugely from lack of supply and insane inflation. I hold hope that this will be fair later when they re-add this item to the game. Gem store or farming for ingredients, I am cool with either. But see, in the case of magic find, this is different; never again will people be able to acquire that armor. Down the road, it would be an extremely beneficial item providing imbalanced benefits to those few who kept theirs over those who don’t get the “good drops” as often. The conduit I am confident will come back, otherwise that would be an unfair quality of life benefit to conduit owners; magic find armor would absolutely be unfair. That’s why we can’t keep it. Stop thinking short term Leviathan. Developers have to look at whats fair to a community, not to the individuals that are hurt. Thats why they call the shots at the end of the day.

alamore.1974:

I dont think ppl are going to leave just because magic find is changed.
Your here DEMANDING things instead of suggesting a alternative.
Dont be so self intitled the world does not revolve arounds you…
I invested plenty of time into magic find and ive always hated the concept.

Now here wat you should be asking for.
For those of use who have invested countless hours into, the soon to be out dated magic find system, we would love to see some sort of compensasion.

My suggestion
A consumable be given that boost magic find for a certain amount of time for each piece of gear we spent time on to get. Or something along those lines.

Ppl that go around saying ‘YOU OWE ME’ well you deserve nothing.

I am going to agree with this statement by Alamore. All the developers have done is removed magic find, which has 0 benefit in combat, from the combat system and allowed us to use it without compromising. The truth here is this thread is a rant because someone invested a lot of money into magic find. I invested a lot of effort to get the Golden Lotus and the associated magic find infusion. But, you know what? Logically your complaint is a bad one. I am willing to give up my 20% infusion for something better, the ability to use other stats without the magic find. Me, I play support and always have, I was monk all the way in GW1. I loved using skills that were different, had utility, and could do something other than kill with. That’s why I made a Giver’s set of exotics, so I could have boon duration buffs and play a boon build. Its not ideal, and won’t win me friends, but its unique. I was really agonizing over the golden lotus, and now I don’t have to anymore. I can focus on boon duration now. My hope is that the new platinum doubloons will let me push boon duration higher than 2% on an accessory, to like 3-4% per piece so I can actually feel equal to players running “optimized” builds.

So, my final word: thank you ArenaNet for making my decisions easier. No complaints from me, the mild effort required to replace runes is miniscule compared to the enhanced gameplay this offers.

You know an interesting exotic weapon that people have not considered as a possibility would be a boomerang. I could see Asura inventing the weapon, or else one of the hunter races like Norn/Charr or possibly even an NPC race like the Hylek (I see this as most likely from their penchant to using blowguns and exotics) that got picked up on by the other races. This would add a very cool weapon type to the game and the types of skills associated could be very imaginative.(I picture lots of attacks that have a “Bounce” effect).

Carighan I think your on to something for the Sickle and Chain. That would be badical to run around with something like that as mesmer. Hmm, I was looking up some two-handed classis weapons. Both the halberd and the sword-staff would be awesome looking weapons and I could see both on a mesmer, particularly the swordstaff as both pieces fit the theme better. Another cool weapon although less Mesmer-like in looks is the morning star, a classicly awesome weapon. The morning star is great because its noticeable and has huge variety in the possible designs of the weapon.

I haven’t seen it done in any other game so far. Also your clipping argument isn’t a good one Advent. If it clips the back why not the front as well? Same issue then. So why not NOT support them as an OH weapon concept eh? Anyways this is now getting off-topic. I would vote for a cane or pistol type weapon as well as focus. What are people’s thoughts about two-handed weapon? I favor MH but wanted to know if anyone has a favorite for the larger weapons.

Cloak, in this case, does not refer to a piece of armor. It refers to a cloth carried in the hand, used to catch the opponent’s weapon, as well as blind and distract the opponent. Your sole objection, then, stems from terminology, and it’s feeble objection at that, as there currently are no cloaks. Yet let’s say this is a reasonable objection – fine. Rename it. E.g. Cape? Amictus? Batman’s Handkerchief? The options are limitless.

I am well aware of Elwood’s statement. My point is you can’t do that to players. “Hey guys, guess what? We have a new category called cloak weapon! Its a piece of cloth we have imbued with offensive invisibility options in the offhand! Ignore the back piece cloaks those are separate armor only items.” Aside from player confusion over terms, we ARE getting cloaks to wear as armor/cosmetic and that is what the cloaks are going to be for and nothing else. The only exception to the rule of armor doubling as a weapon is the shield. But notice a shield unlike armor is wielded not worn. Nowhere does a character wear their shield as an armor item in their hero panel. It doesn’t serve double duty that way, its just that it intrinsically protects the bearer by reducing their attack profile due to its shape. Your argument of using the cloak as an offensive weapon is a possible one, I never denied this, but not in the context of the game. My point is there is no reason to bring it up because its not happening. If you can use a cloak as a weapon, you can use your boot for the same purpose. Here let me take my boot off and run skills through it. To quote Austin Powers, “Who throws a shoe? Honestly!!” I say the same and I think Anet based on its pre-existing article and comments would agree with me. It was meant to be clothing or at best back armor, nothing more. If we are going to offer suggestions, lets base them as much on existing fact as we can first, before conjecturing on the remaining possible weapon types. And so you know, I don’t attack Elwood, I merely point out that the cloak specifically doesn’t work.

I think its time we expanded on the cloak. During the Beta Weekend events the back slot was actually labeled “cloak” In other words, cloaks are already a piece of ARMOR. You cannot rename a piece of armor as a weapon. There are no gauntlets that double as weapon slots. There are no back slots that double as weapon slots either. Please review the talk, topic, and other forum posts in regards to cloaks, they are/will be back slot items so there is NO point assuming it will be included as a weapon when it is so clearly not intended to be, nor will it be. And Requiem, for the record, we also have mantles already thank you very much, they fit in our shoulder slots.

Adding link: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Cloak

Requiem, cloaks are going to be/are cosmetic items and not weapons nor will they ever be for that reason so you need to wipe that off your list. Even if that were not the case a cloak is not a weapon and thus has no skills associated with its use, you wear it not fight with it. Or can you imagine the baseball cap of terror? Or how about the fuzzy Asuran bunny slippers of face eating? Seriously, some things are too obviously not compatible.

Whips are not pre-existing weapons so I find them severely unlikely, but the weapon would certainly be welcomed by me if it was so no problems there. The cane I am not sure where you are going, is that a scepter or a new weapon type? Either way I think a cane would be fashionable for a mesmer, although I don’t see it being implemented unless its a fancy scepter. The rest I have no problem with, would like to see all of those I haven’t mentioned on a mesmer.

Just wanted to thank Elwood for a good reply post. That was fairly candid and I agree with each of your points except about the bouncing bullet concept. I don’t think players have an expectation that a main hand pistol will be just like the current usage of the pistol in the offhand. I could easily see some kind of stealth or blind option there and I could see creative skill usage for the mesmer which would be a fabulous bump. Seriously I would love to see some really creative skills. My biggest reason for pistol MH though is simply because it is the most requested weapon for mesmers and quite frankly, I remember some promotional video’s that highlighted two pistols on the mesmer which made many people disappointed it didn’t work out that way. I am disappointed myself but will patiently wait for this much desired addition to hit the market.

Also a question: has anyone seen a scepter used in the off-hand? Just reaching to see what people might think of that.

Elwood.8347:

Alright…here is the rub. Getting another main hand on Mesmer, while awesome, would require major rebalancing in a short period, and every mesmer would be throwing money at the TP or in the appropriate craft to get it on their character and playing with it. Adding brand spanking new weapons would be an entirely new thing, and cause all sorts of havoc on the economy.

Another ideal weapon for a swashbuckling duelist type profession already within the game…is nothing we got really. A good off hand would be a shield, kinda like a buckler. See, what really sets Mesmer apart is that is has so many off hand options compared to main hand. Much like a fencer has simply his blade, the fencer could also have a cloak, another sword, a pistol, a shield, or anything to help in his fight against his foe. Mesmer’s already have this lovely function. Tossing in the magical aspects with Staff, Scepter, Focus, we don’t need much more. Greatsword was the weird one already.

What I would like to see is more reliable AoE. We have our phantasms that can do it (iZerk) and our bouncing techniques, then Chaos Storm. Beyond that, there is not a lot of AoE on a Mesmer. To that effect of a more “tricky” type class, as the Mesmer is the magic equivalent of a Thief, we need something that can focus on being deceptively long range. Dagger comes to mind, but so does Mace.

Much like the Greatsword in being deceptively long range, the mace’s attacks would have emphasis on range and keeping it that way.

To answer some of these comments (note I do not dislike any comments here but wanted to address them):

Mesmers have struggled to use something that is not a clone factory like the scepter or a melee weapon like the sword. They have tons of cool options with off-hand weapons, but they are horribly matched against the clone-factory of the scepter or the forced melee use of the sword. This is not a balancing issue so match as a compatibility issue, neither weapon is compatible really with most build choices mesmer’s use in combat. That is why people get strung up on the mainhand pistol. Since its a power weapon, pistol would be awesome mainhand for burst and DPS build choices which have sorely been lacking in the one-handed weapons category. About the economy. Adding weapons is a given from what has been announced, we ARE getting them so the economy thrown into chaos sounds like political crybaby talk. Too afraid to accept new stuff? I embrace it so stop crying wolf because some balancing will have to be done, that’s being lame.

You stated after that we have no good swashbuckling type weapon. That is neither here nor there and I don’t really think of a mesmer as a swashbuckler, he is an illusionary mage which is not the same archetype and is not treated the same. Using that as an argument against additional weapons (which we have been promised recently making your argument a straw man argument logically anyways) just detracts from adding new ideas.

AoE is an issue that has plagued mesmers since day one, all the way back to GW1. Since loot is tagged based on being able to hit the monster, this hurts mesmers horribly in everything, pvp, pve, wvw, name it. We don’t get loot drops or credit like other classes who can spam area damage spells so I agree with you on this comment.

I am not sure why you focus on mace, because this is very much a martial weapon and matches the mesmer style worse than any weapon except the hammer. I am not against new weapons by any means, but a mace is a melee weapon even more than a sword is for a mesmer; I have no desire to see ANOTHER melee weapon. I will live with it if it happens and use it too, but I could think of far worthier weapons (lets face it, by sheer numbers of requester’s we know this is mainhand pistol, followed by maybe focus or dagger). For myself I want pistol as it would feel full circle and match the archetype as much as it does thief at least for me. Something that offers another stealth weapon skill even with a longish cooldown I feel is ideal for mesmer but either way I am looking forward to seeing a new trait line which is going to be hugely interesting to see the new combinations available.

I wanted to throw my two cents in here and discuss something different or rather a different viewpoint. In prior descriptions of the Asura it has been stated that they believe that one day they will rule the world. Off-hand that would suggest a military takeover. But what kind of people are Asura? Not fighters. Not even militant. Their tinkerers, scientists, discoverers, and independents with grand dreams and a belief in their own intellectual might on their own. In other words, what would determine true overlordship for the Asura is to be acknowledged by the other races as truly superior intellectually. They don’t have to crush them with golems to do that, they can just be themselves and wait for the rest of the world to realize either that they are inferior to Asura or the Asura are superior to everything else. A subtle distinction, but either one would work for them.

For this reason, I believe that Asura would only attempt to conquer the world if a violent brainiac first managed to subdue his fellow Asura(I see only Inquest accomplishing this. We all know the annoying assistant to Snaff I am talking about). Once the other Asura were in line, I could see a staged assault from Asura gates, with the Charr pushing back against it hard. Humanity might fight back with its new clockwork warriors. No idea how the Sylvari would fair, depends on the Pale Tree. The Norn would just scatter and do their Norn thing, only falling to a drawn out conflict. I don’t hold out hope for LA though; its right in the middle of the city, you don’t hold a town from the outside in like that without something significant backing you up.

+1 from me also. I would love for SOMEONE on the development team to come out and explain what exactly they are doing that requires this much time to make halls. They say they want them epic; in what way exactly? Can we get a bone other than Regina’s “Its a distant feature we aren’t concerned about at the moment” statement? I felt this comment severely downplayed the most asked for feature of the game and an update would be fabulous.

Also, it feels rather lame that a race of mad scientist inventors who are all out to prove their the best would be satisfied with clunky foot-dragging siege machines without considering other uses for them(which they have we just haven’t seen more in WvW yet).

Could someone give some perspective on fielding a 20-golem army? How exactly easy is it to get the plans for those to get 20 at once? Does this happen often enough to justify Icpdragonslayer to say it would be a problem? Its not smart to nip an idea in the bud without backing it up with numbers to prove it.

Ok, I lost my original thread due to the glitching that happened earlier. But to give the gist of my original post, I envision different kinds of constructable vehicles besides golems. I envision fast low power offensive/defensive vehicles for quick crossing the map, I picture normal speed constructs/hazmat suits made by the Asura for the other races that have skills focused on anti-personnel for groups and 1v1 combat. I see submarines that enhance underwater combat and possess heavy torpedo’s. Why? Because I want to see the developer’s build underwater forts for WvW. So we get real underwater combat which is almost non-existent in the game right now. Even pro players often turn into noobs when they go in water just because they have so little experience fighting there. So I want the middle island replaced with a fort….which I don’t see as a problem since guards could be underwater anyways and other creatures like sharks could become factors for defense. We could see new underwater defenses created for defending with and expand gameplay to see some really cool undersea battles. I don’t ever expect flight to become a game mechanic but I do think there is a wide variety of land and water-based vehicles besides the alpha and beta golems that we have available to us which our brilliant Asura engineers (ahem) would be more than happy to invent for the mass of warriors in line to do battle….

As a Kiel supporter, thought I would throw a word in here. My main reason for voting for Kiel is rather simple: I want cheaper waypoints. The lore part is a pointless argument since we will eventually get both at some point and being Asura, I like to apply my genius intellect towards the origins of the disaster at the reactor.

We already know what happened to Abaddon having already lived through it in a previous life so for me its a moot point. Most people aren’t spending money on Black Lion Keys, so the waypoints ARE more convenient.

Otherwise it matters not to me if I vote human or pirate Charr. Being a pirate doesn’t win him kudo points with me though. Maybe the Captain’s Council would be better served with a moral center as opposed to yet-another-pirate running the show? Lastly: I could be swayed to change my opinion with the right incentives. So Evon: what else you gonna throw down to make the deal worth my time?

I don’t see why everyone is fussing about weapons that don’t match. Every profession has a series of weapons they don’t have access to yet. Just find one that fits with that professions lore and then skill balance it. We don’t have to give scepters across the board, maybe warrior gets staff, mesmer gets warhorn or dagger perhaps, etc. Too much linear thinking among players, its easy to find a happy medium lore-wise and then it becomes a matter of skill balance. I am of the favor of either one two-handed and a main-hand, or else a single weapon that is both main-hand and can be used off-hand as well.

Alys Florent.1359:

I seriously think that whoever wrote this summary somehow misunderstood what was said to them. There are 19 weapon types in the game and it is simply not feasible to give every profession access to all of them, especially if they want to add whole new weapon types. Plus, combinations like Engineer/Scepter, Guardian/Dagger, Elementalist/Rifle just don’t work with the art and lore for professions. Elementalists will never get a Greatsword because it doesn’t fit our lore (not to mention the balance issues and the fact that we ALREADY have the Fiery Greatsword conjure).

What I believe they possibly meant was to give every profession access to at least one NEW weapon type.

(Now, Necromancer with Greatsword would make me throw out everything I ever believed about balance and feasibility)

I absolutely agree with this post! I think many builds are infeasible because of a lack of variety in weapon skills themselves, not so much the trait lines although I will never be averse to expanding trait lines either. Take my main, a Mesmer. If we want to use main/offhand weapons we have to pick one of two poisons, either the clunkyness of the scepter complete with blowing up our phantasms due to its slot 1 annoyingness, or we go sword forcing us to choose a melee weapon. I believe a third weapon, something new introduced, maybe each class gets access to a new main-hand and a new two-handed weapon, that would be a great series of new playing style for all professions and could resolve a number of balancing issues between classes if these weapons skills were to be designed with care. I don’t care much for additional utility skills, I have enough options that I am not concerned to see more in that arena. Some buffs to the crappier elites would be appreciated though.

I would like to update this topic with one other thing: I think the buffs being all defensive should be changed. Lets give it two changes if I may: Buff boon duration to 2% per armor piece. Take out one other defensive buff and replace it with either power, precision, or condition damage. My preference would be either power or precision. This way the skill has a damage buff, a boon buff that is more fair and not total throw away of points, and a defensive buff for normal defense like Toughness for instance.

Godmoney, a lot of people like to discuss portal because we really like and love this skill. And before you say its just a game, you bothered to post in a game forum so you obviously cared enough to talk about it. Every once in a while I miss a t while typing(notice how g is right below it?) The fact you are attacking one misspelled word shows how childish you are. I for one have never complained about poor grammar in online forums since its par for the course but since it’s so important to you to be infantile please continue, I would love to hear more from you.

I actually meant people who posted in here could add like a +1 post or -1 depending on their feelings. People who post here in the forums are individuals who care, and any attempt to do so in-game would be far too intangible short of letters to numerous people to get responses back which I think would be too difficult without having distribution lists.

I strongly second this suggestion. Most people warp to lions arch for free already, I see no reason why we shouldn’t get an insta-warp to our home city or home instance, I would absolutely prefer doing so over using LA anyways.