Guild Wars 2

MoP basically plays like those instants lightnings from a scepter ele. I haven’t met many mesmers using them, but mantra alone probably isn’t going to kill you. Look for other dmg sources, like Mirror Blade and avoid them, so you don’t have to worry too much about the mantra hits.

I just skipped over the thread, so i might miss something but judging from your signature you are a ranger?

Both Signet of Stone and Lightning Reflexes counter a mesmer burst and can be used at any time even while stunned. Shatter mesmers got 1 burst every ~10s which is quite telegraphed and can be easily avoided most of the time.

On top of that, a shatter mesmer is about the squishiest build in GW2, maybe tied with glass thieves (they have less hp, but more armor and can trait for 100% crit backstabs, thus not needing to stack precision).

Maybe the mesmer got incredibly lucky with his chaos storm. It procs 1 out of chilled, poison, weakness and daze every second and always seems to screw me over. He outplayed/-lucked you and instead of qq’ing you should try to get better, like we all do.

6-12 FPS since patch wherever i am, regardless of fullscreen or windowed mode.

Great patch…

It was there yesterday…maybe someone killed it on your server?

Also, pulling the Grub to blue keep is WAY more fun ^^

So they can fix it in a future patch and sell it as mesmer balancing.

PvE (and, to a lesser extent, WvW) still doesn’t matter for balancing. I really do hope ArenaNet tested the changes in a tPvP environment (also in 1v1, while it’s not an official gamemode they still happen).

I’m mainly with Helseth here, a build that kills people by doing nothing but dodging and spamming auto attacks shouldn’t exist at all.

PU Scepter Staff “i don’t know what i’m doing but people die around me” will be so OP now…

That aside, i’m happy about the Mind Stab buff and iElasticity. Time to swap out iInvigoration for GS/Staff shatter, i think.

Chaos Armor is ok, but like many other of our skills/traits pretty random and can screw you over as much as it can help you.

Being able to get protection on demand with the old Chaos Armor was really useful against thieves and other burst builds, now you must yourself get hit to get anything and be lucky to get the protection you want.

Personally, i would simply reduce the cd of the skill if ArenaNet feels ok with what it’s doing. Eles generally have more skills at their disposal and are balanced with higher cds in exchange.

I’m currently using the standard 4/4/0/0/6 GS/Staff shatter for WvW roaming and doing quite fine. I use Blink, Decoy and Mantra of Resolve.

There are a few Matchups that are very hard to unwinnable (Power Necro, most Thief builds, …) but at there very least i usually manage to get away by exploiting terrain and/or our underwater mobility.

Playing this in WvW really requires to be able to pull off About Face -> Phase Retreat consistently, though.

This is why a game that uses the same balancing for PvE and PvP (including WvW) shouldn’t be balanced around PvE at all.

PvE doesn’t need to be balanced, you are not fighting each other but a dumb AI which can be exploited with anything and even a group of full tank guards stacking retal will be able to win every fight at some point.

PvP on the other hand, is crucial. You are fighting each other, sometimes for real life prices even. Unless you split balancing, this should be your priority #1 for balancing. And in this case, conditions are fine, maybe even a little too fine.

PvE balance shouldn’t a deciding factor at all…sadly that’s where ArenaNet gets most of their money from.

The mesmer changes haven’t even been released, yet and people are already qq’ing…don’t worry, unless ArenaNet seriously break with their tradition, there will be hefty nerfs for us mesmers.

Also, in WvW there is still P/D condi which could be played by a toast and still roll over a mesmer.

What gamemode are you planning for? I can only really speak for WvW roaming, but unless mesmers get some good condi cleanses, you can expect to autolose against the wave of P/D condi thieves coming ahead.

I had a complete redesign a few weeks ago. Still looking for some good gloves.

TheBandicoot.5294:

Nope, Cleansing Ire does require you to hit your target. if they changed how it works with longbow F1 remains to be seen though.

I thought the “has to hit” part was because you didn’t spend adrenaline before if you missed. So with the upcoming changes i believed CI to trigger everytime.

I only read what Dulfy wrote on her side, so someone needs to clarify for me: Since bursts now always use up adrenaline, does CI actually cleanse conditions every time you use them even if you miss?

If so, they should probably change CI to cleanse 1 condition every time you use a burst, no matter how many adrenaline you spend.

Meh, i kinda liked P/P, bad as it was, but seems like it gets nerfed pretty bad.

Unload now does less damage per initiative. The damage or cast speed was never the problem (for me), but how fast you burn through your ini pool. BP was crucial for survival, too.

/edit: My bad, i totally misread the change.

Imo they shouldn’t nerf BP, but make it harder to combo HS with it (reveal when you land the HS, increase ini cost ect).

I think we’ll have to see how this change turns out. Of course, Evis still does stupid damage, but at least warriors are now kinda punished for not landing it.

I’m pretty disappointed that they don’t do anything to Cleansing Ire, though.

The game was advertised as having no gear progress, ascended was already a stretch. If you want to grind for better gear levels, this is the wrong game for you, literally every other game does this already.

In my experience, Withdraw or similar skills with casting times are usually pretty easy to pull off. I’m still learning to Phase Retreat (without binding Free Camera) and what i’m currently doing is this:

- About Face + Phase Retreat slightly later (~0.25s, pretty easy if those keys are nearby each other, just roll ober them).
- About Face again ~0.5s later. Using About Face during execution of a skill does not work and even though Phase Retreat is instant, i seem to need a small pause.

All that while holding W but NOT holding left or white mouse button, since you can’t about face otherwise.

When doing this with Withdraw i usually do the 2nd About Face manually during skill execution since i got the time.

Backstab should reveal on miss/block/invul, true. Same as warrior bursts should consume adrenaline when miss/block/invul (with an additional nerf to Cleansing Ire so they are not entirely immune to conditions).

That aside, thieves are still way squishier than warriors, usually die when immobilized or stunned at the right point and need to spend a whole lot of resources more than warriors to burst this high.

Who needs to regenerate adrenaline when it didn’t get spent in the first place because Eviscerate was dodged?

I’m not a PvE guy at all, yet i did it on first try on Staff/GS shatter mesmer, without having any clue what to do.

The game tells you everything you need to know to do this and after you’ve been hit by a flame once you know to avoid them, too.

If anything the fight was way too easy.

The easiest way to do this was standing at max range to the boss, dropping iZerker on him, evading flames and dropping chaos storm + iWarlock on every mender that comes around. Shatter only if i want the mender down now.

No nerfs \o/

Don’t have a warrior, but an easy way (using GS) should be:

- run through the camp to aggro the guards.
- LoS the scouts (eg by running around a corner), so they follow you and group up with the rest.
- optionally: pop Berserker Stance.
- WW against a Wall, 100B.
- Everything but the Lord should be dead or on low health now. Autoattack or use your other weapon (optimally something that cleaves).

If possible have an interrupt ready for when the Lord attempts to heal. Afterwards burst him down, before he heals again.

Now i want to know what class OP is playing.

Also..

since you are a skilled player who doesn’t spam… right?

I’m sure you are a skilled player who doesn’t spam his attacks… right?

I use the standard cast mode (press once → move circle → press again or mouseclick) and i’m still able to stomp the real mesmer after he reappears, even if i have to blink.

I don’t think i’ve been able to start stomping the clone and blink to the real mesmer, however. That’d be like stomping a different player and has never worked.

Scratch Blurred Inscriptions…the only instant cast Signet we have is Midnight, which blinds anyway.

Blinkstomping eles only works if they vapor form as soon as you start stomping, and even then only with 1200 range blink if they move in a straight line.

Since most players tend to use their downed skill at the last possible moment, i’d advise having a hammer guard, rifle engi, x/D ele or anything with a launch (not knockback) with you. Launching the downed enemy ~0.5-1s before the stomp ends will prevent him from doing anything and still be in range for the stomp.

Sadly mesmers don’t have any launches.

I thought the +50% movement speed applied to the Rampage part of Elixir X. I didn’t watch the stream, though, so i don’t know in which context the changes were mentioned.

We will know for sure when ele changes are announced.

Interrupting the downed enemy somehow never works for me…

Another way would be any signet + that invul trait.

Any stealth + PU can work, if it procs Aegis, same for Chaos Storm, but is unreliable.

It’s elixir X and only when traited, yes.

Actually, Rush is more like 1500 range with Warrior’s Sprint, 1600 if you consider swiftness.

K, you have your Arcing Slice…can i take it and give you my Cry of Frustration, Mind Stab, iLeap and iMage for it? And that’s only GS + Sword/Torch, there is much more.

Actually it is useful to dodge them for Cleansing Ire.

I’m actually pretty sure nobody ever thinks “i have to dodge this eviscerate, because otherwise that warrior will heal 3 conditions”, because if they are hit they are kind of dead, anyway.

/edit: Now that i think about it, Eviscerate might fall in the same category as Hundred Blades. The skills for themselves are not that hard to avoid, but if you spend a good amount of time and CDs to whittle down a warrior, maybe having him even reset 1-2 times with high mobility, keeping distance as good as possible only to die to a single skill because you are misjudging the situation for once or run out of options, that’s just not fair.

That’s about the only situation, Moa would be considered remotely useful.

PU is pretty op in 1v1s, where mobility doesn’t matter as much or no points have to be hold. Sadly, the trait is keeping the mesmer down, because outside of it the class has some serious issues.

I think I would rather want to see adrenaline gain made harder.

I already made a proposal in another thread:
- Remove adrenaline gain from Cleansing Ire and let it cleanse 1 condition per burst ability, not per bar spent.
- Burst skills consume adrenaline, no matter if they miss or not.

-> Adrenaline is harder to get, weakness against conditions increased, more reliable cleanse without having to rely on LB.

If you tweak the numbers on the heals a bit, Mending or Healing Surge could even become usable with this.

I haven’t felt the urge to use Pistol #2 so far… ^^ On mesmer i got GS #3, which is equally useless, but it’s cooldown-based, so i can squeeze it in when i have the time, but when i have to manage initiative…not so much.

Kiting a GS + Axe/Sword Warrior sure is easy when he only has WW, Rush, Eviscerate, Bull’s Charge, Throw Axe, Bladetrail (Cripple) + long Duration Swiftness.

Well, we can look at it in another way too. Longbow Ranger w/wo Sic’em will also tear a mesmer apart

That’s actually doable as a GS + Sw/T shatter running boomremove + Arcane Thievery. I just fought a (i’d say) quite good LB/GS ranger a few times and i think i was able to win:lose positively after getting used to the fight.

Currently, i find fighting D/D eles harder than thieves. Thieves i can burst if i get the timing right (except S/D, need to practice that more), but eles seem to outheal everything i do while having too many boons to remove and even high damage in Air/Fire (Lighting Flash + Burning Speed crits for for ~8-10k combined). That’s not saying eles are op, that’s just shatter being bad. Especially when everything is AoE and Sword #3 could as well not exist at all.

What i find even more funny is the power discrepancy between our builds. I just got destroyed by a power necro on shatter (like 100-0 in <1s as soon as i got feared). I specced into power PU for the first time ever while leaving everything as it was, just putting 6 points from Illusions into Chaos and i basically beat him by doing nothing but stealthing, casting illusions and blinking behind him whenever he got to close. Most of the time i didn’t even had to worry about dodging because random Aegis was doing all the work.

Something tells me the balance is just not right here.

Ah, yeah, they nerfed that field. I forgot about that. Berserker Stance still remains, though, and BP costs a lot of initiative. Also remember that LB is ranged and thus not that vulnerable against BP and WW from GS hits multiple times (while also evading the blind field?)

Regarding Heartseeker, at least they spend all of their initiative this way while Rush is a single cd. But i think HS needs to be changed some way or the other since it offers the same heatseeking ability Eviscerate does (if you HS a player that is about to stealth and queue up multiple HS, they will auto-aim).

However, let’s not derail this thread. This is about Eviscerate, not thieves. There are threads about them as well.

1 – You can see the warrior since the beginning.

That’s true for the thief as well, unless he stealthed while being out of sight or you already were busy with another fight. Most of the time, you at least know that there is a thief near you.

2 – You only fight the warrior (no AI) so you are not worry about pets CC or where would he attack.

True.

3 – You can almost perma blind the warrior if you know what you are doing.

passive & active Berserker Stance can counter that. Also BP costs 6 initiative and when you spam it, you won’t be doing much else. LB burst also easily counters the field by removing blind every second.

4 – Like Thiefs with backstab, warrior has to do a lot more than only use eviscerate to win. (again, against bads either classes only need to press some buttons).

If Eviscerate was the only skill watching for, that’s true, but against a WvW GS + Axe/Sword (or Shield) build with or without Bull’s Rush, nearly every skill that’s not an autoattack is potentially deadly. And with Axe, even autos hit like a truck.

5 – His gap closers are not ports and they do not blind the targets.

Gap “closers” are totaly fine and needed on a class that’s designed to fight in melee range, but being able to run like 1600 units with Rush + Swiftness (1200 base range + 33%) in the blink of an eye is probably not what the skill was meant for. And that’s without Whirlwind and potentially Bull’s Rush.

/edit:

And a steal that gives you stealth is also very good.

Could be me, but that trait was never working for me. My thief always autoattack directly after, revealing herself (with autoattack disabled).

Do you need someone to tell you that the thief was terrible?

Wiki says, a 3bar Eviscerate does ~1k + 3.0*Power Damage, so it doesn’t actually needs to be that glassy (especially not against a shatter mesmer, the squishiest build in the game). If you figure in might stacks, it’s even easier.

I used it for a while but switched to the Tormented Sword later. Both fit in the color scheme of the mesmer, so if you don’t need the gold and want to play with sword, i’d use it.

- Confusion
- Retaliation
- Necro Reanimatior Trait
- Warrior LB
- Thief Body Shot (well, somehow)

All those had a good amount of QQ before getting changed. I probably missed a lot, but those are the few i remember.

I missed Skullcrack and the whole “Warrior is too weak in PvP” (which they were at the beginning) which caused Anet to absurdly buffing Warriors to the state they are in today.

If you trait the torch, i would put it above all the others, because iMage can actually be useful then (note that when you are blinded, casting iMage will cleanse the blind and still summon him. His bouncing attack will then cleanse further).

Other than that, it’s between Pistol and Torch for me. Torch is more defensive and better for roaming where you want to get away quickly very often (+ the added cleanses). For dueling, especially against thieves, you might want the stun of the pistol and iDuelist can show you where the thief is moving in stealth.

As a WvW roamer, i also always carry a focus with me for buffing swiftness. Equipping → casting Curtain → Equipping back takes ~1s once you get used to it.

dancingmonkey.4902:

Iavra.8510:

The devs of GW1 (and i guess even the original class devs of this game) have long gone and been replaces by people without any clue what they are doing.

Seeing a dev playing 5 signet warrior tells everything, really.

You have proof of your claim about the devs, or is this simply uninformed claims?

Because a dev plays in game testing a signet build to see how it can be improved, you claim that makes them an uninformed dev? To me, to claim that seems extremely uninformed.

Seeing the balance patch history: Yes, they have absolutely no clue.