Guild Wars 2

We’re not the best at bursting, we’re not the best at stacking conditions, not to mention boons, we’re don’t have a lot of cleanse available, we’re not really good at healing, hell it seems like we’re not even the best class at applying confusion. But we can do some of everything, which makes the class versatile and fun. Plus we have some great utility/elite skills, namely portal and time warp.

Kaleban.9834:

Iruwen.3164:

but it’s a server load problem. Like they would change the condition stack limit if they weren’t limited by server capacity.

I would love for someone, anyone to point to proof of this statement.

Until then, stop citing server load/capacity as a reason for terrible game mechanics. Unless there’s actual proof of such, then you’re just spreading disinformation and de-railing the argument from its merits.

There are FPS games that use hit location, some upwards of a decade old or more, that would require more resources at the server and client side than any MMO. If GW2’s balance problems and game mechanics are the result of a hardware bottleneck, then its definitely time to upgrade.

At least that’s what Colin said:

There’s a cap on condition stacks of 25. In a scenario where you have two thieves attacking a boss and one of them can achieve a stack of 25 by themselves, the other one essentially becomes useless because they’ve got nothing to stack on. Is anything being done to address that to make them less redundant?]

Colin: Currently no. Interesting statistic for you: every condition in the game costs server bandwidth. ‘Cause we have to track how often the condition is running, what the duration of that condition is and what the stack is. So the more stacks we allow, the more expensive it gets because we’re tracking every additional stack on there. And so we could say, you can have infinite stacks. Number one: that becomes really unbalanced. But number two: it’s actually extremely expensive for us, on a performance basis. That’s one of those weird, kind of back-end server issues that can help make game designer decisions regardless of what you want to do with it.

http://dragonseason.com/Front/tabid/124/EntryId/212/Lunch-with-Colin-Johanson-Part-III.aspx

Just because they have a different opinion? Grow up. This is a pretty objective discussion, actually. E.g. I understand Kaleban’s arguments, I just have a different opinion. We don’t know if a dev actually reads this, but if they do they’re probably interested in what people think about the AE limit. I guess they’d like to go with an DR approach, but it’s a server load problem. Like they would change the condition stack limit if they weren’t limited by server capacity.

KrisHQ.4719:

It should be obvious to everyone why mesmers are OP.
Insane ranged burst (you can shatter while at distance), incredibly kiting abilites and cripple, invisbility, confusion and invulnerability on a very low CD (probably the most broken stand-alone skill IG, yes Blurred Frenzy i’m looking at you) it’s like the Guardians elite + dmg and 1/9 CD. For tPvP they can grant the whole team instant mobility. I didnt even mention the illusions that can do 7k dmg on a 15 sec CD.

Sigh. Thanks for demonstrating what we’ve been talking about above. You’re again mixing up build versatility with imbalance. Learn to adapt. We can do all of these things, but others can do them better. We’re just the best balanced allround class.

/e: I’m really amazed by the amount of eles complaining about other classes. Everytime I check people’s post histories, they either main an ele or a thief, with some guardians between. Never played a guardian, are they faceroll button smashers too?

Dante.1508:

I don’t ignore either, two totally different views.. good or bad it shows the lack of communication for the future we as players get, especially here in this forum..

There’s no lack of communication, it’s all in the dev tracker or in streams and other interviews, just check the well known community sites. They won’t repeat themselves over and over again and they cannot make statements about things they don’t know yet. The state of the game is just what they said: no expansion is currently being worked on, they’re extending the living world concept. Which means there’s enough revenue via sales and gems to work on free extra content, which is good.

I just did a bit of math between carrion and rabid and it really boils down to a degree of “doesn’t matter” when it comes to survivability, except for two things: heals are more efficient with toughness as they don’t scale while vitality helps with incoming condition damage. Personally, I’m sticking with rabid with some jewels for vitality as I’m mainly roaming in groups and toughness adds to condition damage.

I’d just ignore the escapist’s article, considering it’s a mixture of misreading information, false assumptions and general misunderstanding.
I’m currently browsing the rest of his articles because I’m not quite sure if he just had a bad day or if he’s actually dense.

/e: I tend to believe the latter is true.

I didn’t say anything about proximity. It just has to account for all players affected by the AE so the total damage doesn’t grow absurdly high with more players in range. Also few people shouldn’t be able to reject lots of of people from crossing an area. Total damage is what counts here, that’s what supposed to bring AE in line with direct damage. And they’re probably gonna reduce it further, at least that’s the last thing I heard on that topic:

AoE abilities balancing
- One of the issues brought up a lot in WvW./sPvP is AoE (Area of Effect). We feel like they are too strong at the moment and a lot of people in WvW are gaming the system using AoEs.
- Reducing AoE effectiveness to bring them in line with the single target damage skills.
- Major update coming to all the AoE skills – make classes that are good at single target damage stand out a bit more.

http://dulfy.net/2013/01/17/gw2-dev-livestream-jan-17-transcript/

Simply because it’s not balanced. Pretty much the opposite of what you claim is true.

Now where’s the masses of condition/confusion mesmers people are complaining about, seems like I’m pretty alone with that :o

FYI: 18.5 GB when switching between two languages (English/German in my case).

We don’t scatter when faced with multiple arrow carts, we stick together so we profit from AE boons unless the damage absolutely isn’t bearable, which means the tactic has to be changed (i.e. reduce supply and take out defenses first). With the removal of an AE cap, the same will have to apply to boons. Go figure.
And that’s yet another false assumption, just because people spread slightly more to avoid AoE, it’s still one huge zerg. Because it’ll still be the easiest and most viable way of playing WvW. There has to be an actual incentive to quit playing that way by making other approaches more rewarding.
That HB comparison was just a joke I guess.
The correct way of getting rid of the hard cap would be: make zerging less interesting, then introduce a diminishing returns based system.

I’m so gonna stalk all of you now crazy laughter

Luthan.5236:

They should instead remove custom brawl. Boring and nobody needs(people only doing it for achievements).

Not true. You’re overestimating the importance of PvP at all, PvPers are probably just an (unfortunately very vocal) minority compared to the total playerbase, just check the leaderboards. Plus many people only use it to test builds.

SoulSaga.2390:

I dont think its about adding more weapons to the game or for classes in general as much as it is about more skills for players to choose from. This doesnt necessarily mean more weapons. I could mean allowing players to pick their weapon skills like they pick their utility skills.

Nah, current system is fine. More weapons to choose from per profession from the already existing ones would be enough diversity.

miniL.7361:

Hell, who cares

ANet, they’re really into that balancing stuff.

PS: the way to anti-zerging isn’t making some abilities op but to encurage playing in smaller groups.

Duke Blackrose.4981:

Why doesn’t the Staff count? It’s got good condition damage

The staff is great, but definitely not because of condition damage (and the phantasm is just bad).

There just aren’t any CPUs that would be a real improvement for Socket AM2/AM2+. And upgrading the graphics card won’t help when you’re constantly limited by the CPU.

Peetee.9406:

Want to know what dominates eles?

Skill lag, inability to switch attunements = worthless ele

True for every profession.

Mesmer either needs another ranged mainhand option or the secpter’s autoattack finally has to be fixed.

What’s your limit? You’ll have to upgrade your board and probably RAM along with the CPU. What about the rest of the system? Power supply?

There’s probably a reason for that, I don’t mind if it’s changed if there’s something unbalanced though. What exactly was your argument?

/e: I’m not using Confusing Enchantments, and Blinding Befuddlement is capped as far as I know. Confusing Enchantments requires you to actively cross the field so it’s in line with other skills/traits that work that way I guess.

That’s all neat and stuff, only problem is that your cute little theory simply doesn’t work out because people don’t think (and play) that way, which you know of course. Example: pretty much every MMO.
The only idea of the thread is to make AE more powerful than it already is by repeating the same feeble arguments over and over again. Same holds true for LordByron. Bad news for you: ANet alread said they’re gonna nerf AE to bring it in line with direct damage.

Now guess what class Kaleban is playing. Not really a surprise. Funny that suddenly Eles are “at a significant disadvantage” when it helps in arguing for removing the AE cap.

Pinko.2076:

Iruwen.3164:

Pinko.2076:

If mesmers gear specifically for con. damage, you can get around 2300.

https://dviw3bl0enbyw.cloudfront.net/uploads/forum_attachment/file/62321/gw001.jpg
That’s with full exotic rabid gear (condition damage major, minor toughness) with runes of the undead (condition damage), 30 in illusions (300 condition damage), exquisite chrysocola jewels (condition damage major) and chaotic transference trait (5% of toughness added to condition damage, not in illusions but in chaos tree btw). Weapons: +condition damage major.
Will be slightly more with ascended gear.

With tuning crystal und veggie pizza, it’s ~1600 condition damage. Didn’t pick the most expensive versions but the second highest one, the difference is negligible though.

With 25 stacks from sigil of corruption, it’s 1850 condition damage.

From there, at least another dozen of might stacks is required to get to 2300 condition damage.

Is some of the condition damage not displayed correctly in the stats window or what exactly will I have to do to reach 2300 condition damage just by gearing “specifically”?

I made a build on a pve calculator just now that’s 2350ish. Ascended gear can be used in PvE. Plus 10% from Undead + chaos, food, utility, stacks. I don’t know what you’re doing wrong, but I can link you if you want.

My point was still that the condition damage cap is way, way above 1700, and engineers go much farther past that than mesmers because they can maintain 25 might stacks on their own.

You said “If mesmers gear specifically for con. damage, you can get around 2300”, now you say “Plus 10% from Undead + chaos, food, utility, stacks”, so the 2300 are fully buffed, which is a different story. And my point was about mesmers only, thats why I quoted that part. Engineers are a different story, they may have to be reviewed if they can stack confusion easily, also have other conditions available and can additionally stack might. Mesmer options are very limited and random in these regards.

Ceder Of Tyria.5079:

Since this topic first came up it have been a hot topic in our guild and have been discussed over and over as many have been unsecured about what the exploit was and did they do something that wasn’t allowed without knowing it. This explanation will mean a great relief to a lot of gamers.
I would like to encourage you to post something like it, asap, if it should happen again.
Thank you!

They won’t provide any details on exploits as that would encourage exploiting. People will look for other places where the same exploit could potentially work. And people would use it and complain afterwards when they’re banned.
Don’t do silly things and you won’t be banned. If you can do something shady in batch thousands of times and it generates profit worth the hassle for example, you should be wary.

Loli Ruri.8307:

I suggest turning hyperthreading off, you’ll get more performance per thread by doing that anyways (unless you got smart hyperthreading), and if not, your CPU is probably parking.

I’m losing FPS in GW2 with my i7-920@3,7 GHz if I disable hyperthreading. There has been a bug with Nvidia drivers a while back that caused a severe performance hit with HT enabled, that has been fixed long ago though. The only current game I know of that may still be impacted negatively by HT under certain circumstances is BF3. Of course HT doesn’t really make a difference if the game in question only uses a few threads.
What sometimes really helps (did help me) with stuttering in GW2 is to set the pre-render limit from 3 to 1 with Nvidia graphics.

Grimwolf.7163:

What am I missing here?

That you’re fighting with weapons, not with a calculator. Power is guaranteed damage, statistics don’t help with bad luck. And usually, I don’t hit my enemy 100+ times before he’s dead.

Are there 100+ player zergballs in DAoC? Anyway, I’m still voting for the DR approach WoW uses. It’s fair without being a hard cap from what I see.
http://www.wowwiki.com/Area_damage_caps

+1, that really gets annoying in larger battles. Along with the titles.

I don’t even have that problem, it should only occur if your computer is too slow after the network related culling has been fixed. Same with thieves, not a problem since.

Ntranced.7415:

So the end result of any change is to make almost everyone unhappy and to start arguments between EU and NA players.

That’s the saddest part about it, this should not end in an EU vs NA war. The solutions ANet offered simply don’t satisfy everybody. It could be so simple, do the reset on saturday (or sunday, people are working on saturdays too) or at separate times. Fin.

Voradors.5381:

lordkrall.7241:

Voradors.5381:

Hey, in all seriousness here……………………………….Why not a Saturday mid day PST reset time?

HMMMMMMMMMMMMM?

Does it NEED to be Friday?

Because they don’t want to force the team to work 6 days a week?

Is this seriously the concern? I am a bit out of touch, and i really am asking if that was an answer the devs gave.

Cuz i mean…..why cant this be automated like the actual daily resets are? Is there manual calculations that go into place to decide who moves up and down a tier? Cuz again, that seems like it could be automated.

Just imagine them sitting there with their solar calculators, now I understand why the actual reset takes so long :p

PS: there has to be an emergency team anyway, what if the servers crash on a weekend?

King Amadaeus.8619:

Personally I believe if they truly wanted to issue a fix for the “reset” issue, then they would have simply moved it to Saturday afternoon, or something along those lines that would be universally time-acceptable for all parties…

Nah, just too simple and obvious, no tinfoil involved.

Hickeroar.9734:

ANet has a (rapidly building) history in GW2 of hearing a few players gripe…then making quick, unwise decisions that tick off the majority of the player base.

Those “few players” pretty much has been the entire european playerbase, which is quite massive. The problem just became more urgent because of DST which shifted the reset from 1am to 2am. 1am was bearable, 2am simply was too much.

People are confusing the availability of a broad variety of viable builds with imbaness. They probably guess we could do everything at the same time.

As I said, if balancing is required for engis, that doesn’t make confusion op in general. Pry bar is an (almost) instant five stacks compared to the three second channel of illusionary images for example, I thought that would be balanced by the skill’s short range, but considering the high amounts of possible condition damage if what you say is true, there may be some balancing required. Pretty possible that people are also associating confusion with mesmers only and don’t realize that they’re actually blown up by an engi.

Bunter.3795:

It’s marginal in it’s effect. If you couldn’t stay up until 2am to play, which according to every EU poster here was such a hard chore, you are gaining at most 2 hours of playtime. These same two hours, when you are CHOOSING to play, the NA population is still at work because their choice has been removed.

Well no. People don’t login at all for the reset when it starts at 2am. I’m not saying it’s not bad for NA, they should just do it at completely separate times.

jportell.2197:

Bugs that are advantageous? Please do tell…

Signet of Illusions just crosses my mind, it grants more health than probably intended. Considering the stupid way it works, that’s just fair though…

Pinko.2076:

If mesmers gear specifically for con. damage, you can get around 2300.

https://dviw3bl0enbyw.cloudfront.net/uploads/forum_attachment/file/62321/gw001.jpg
That’s with full exotic rabid gear (+condition damage major, minor toughness) with runes of the undead (+condition damage), 30 in illusions (+300 condition damage), exquisite chrysocola jewels (+condition damage major) and chaotic transference trait (5% of toughness added to condition damage, not in illusions but in chaos tree btw). Weapons: +condition damage major.
Will be slightly more with ascended gear.

With tuning crystal und veggie pizza, it’s ~1600 condition damage. Didn’t pick the most expensive versions but the second highest one, the difference is negligible though.

With 25 stacks from sigil of corruption, it’s 1850 condition damage.

From there, at least another dozen of might stacks is required to get to 2300 condition damage.

Is some of the condition damage not displayed correctly in the stats window or what exactly will I have to do to reach 2300 condition damage just by gearing "specifically"?

PS: with that setup, all normal attacks do little to no damage. Even the weapons that are focused on conditions require a lot of power. It’s strictly a confusion build. Mesmers aren’t really good at stacking up other conditions, if we go for bleeds, a much higher crit rate is required and we’re still inferior compared to other classes. Effective poisoning or burning capabilities: laughable.
You could go for carrion (power/vitality/condition damage) gear instead of rabid (precision/toughness/condition damage) gear. Which actually reduces the condition damage because you lose toughness, plus it makes you a lot more prone to direct damage and pretty much removes any crit chance, reducing the effectiveness of the power increase.

Acelerion.6820:

Berzerker/Knight mesmer with 300 condi due to spec and condition damage stacks.
1744 a tick followed with some glass cannon dps.
Its not just pure condition mesmers that use confusion to their advantage.

That required 10 stacks of confusion. You’ve probably traited illusionary retribution and hit the enemy with cry of frustration and/or illusionary persona plus another shatter. Anyway, considering the damage you deal with a full zerker build, mind wrack, mental torment and illusionary persona when it crits, which it does all the time when specced accordingly, confusion damage is laughable compared to the burst damage and havok two mind wracks (at half the cooldown of cry of frustration btw) cause, unless the opponent is a mindless button smasher. And if the enemy is smart, it does no damage at all. In your assumed spec, confusion wears off after 3s anyway.

Again, confusion offers some nice short time stopping power and absolutely facemelts unaware enemies that have no clue whatsoever. But that’s it, pretty much.

Oozo.7856:

Yes, confusion is definitely the weakest condition. All of the confusion mesmers and engineers out there _(and there are a lot of them)_ just play confusion builds because of how challenging it is for them to succeed with it. What noble souls to put themselves at such a disadvantage against other players.

Pure logic.

I’m playing it because it’s the only efficient, reliable and safe way for a mesmer to tag for loot bags quickly in WvW. Blame ANet for having implemented a system that doesn’t allow you to play a support role if you need badges (which you always need).

If engineers or op when it comes to confusion, they have to be reworked. That doesn’t make confusion op in general though.

And no, once again because some people seem to like that argument: you cannot stack lots of confusion on lots of people from long range. Glamour builds don’t work that way, unless people are actually dumb enough to constantly run through the fields and the mesmer is traited for both confusing enchantments and blinding befuddlement, which is an absoutely selfcrippling zerg bomb only build. Any other class that has access to strong AE spells, like eles, can do way better than that while still being absolutely viable in 1vs1 and PvE.
When a mesmer applies high stacks of confusion to single or few targets (not zergs), he wastes several of his longer cooldowns and can’t do much after that.
Illusionary images is easily avoidable, so is confusion applied by combo fields. Shatters are dangerous but don’t last long and can be avoided either, the creation of illusions as well as the actual shatter. I’d rather worry about those zerker mind wrackers, they hit real hard. That’s pretty much where the real high stacks come from.

/e: the forum insists on underlining even when I disable textile, that’s not intended...

Mirta.5029:

Algreg.3629:

typical leftist broken argument: No, it were only “not fair” if “rich” people would get stuff only for their quality of being rich, while in reality, they get more because they pay more. “poor” players don´t get less because they are “poor”, but because they pay less. Also, most well-to-do people are partially that because they do not throw away money according to every whim. Lastly, noone keeps you from qualifying for a higher real life income, if you want to have more money to spend on a game, well, go and get it.

well you see not all countries have open job places even. At this point to even HAVE a job is lucky.

Well then, since you’re unemployed you have time to farm gold. Problem solved.

MrForz.1953:

And besides, what’s the overall thought about confusion triggering on abilities linked to dodging?

Imo it shouldn’t. I’d further discuss if it should trigger on heal or generally purely defensive abilities. If it’s nerfed, it has to be accompanied by some kind of condition buff (at least for mesmers, don’t know about engis) though as we’re not really good at stacking up other conditions and condition duration doesn’t affect conditions applied by illusions.

Pry bar is prone to many short range interrupts in addition to harder dodging though, it was just buffed in February so I guess ANet is well aware of how it works.

So if you don’t have much time to play because you actually have a real life you should be poor in the game? Try less playing, more working, then you’ll be able to be wealthy in both worlds.

Imo the lower damage and short range balance pry bar. Cooldown’s the same as confusing images.

Burning doesn’t stack in intensity because it would tick too high. At 2000 condition damage, bleed does 142 damage per stack per second, burning does 828 (confusion 430 but can be avoided, poison 284 but reduces heal effectiveness).

Blitz.3627:

skullmount.1758:

I just don’t get why they can’t. They are completely different set of servers, which probably also means completely different databases, which means they should be able to split it.

Since the Trading Post is global and both the NA and EU servers use the same sets of login and authentication servers, it is obvious that they are not completely different databases and therefore it should be easy to understand the issue.

There are no EU/NA matchups and guesting isn’t possible vice versa because character data only exists in one region.

skullmount.1758:

So now instead of 8PM (Eastern, 5PM Pacific), its gonna be 6PM (Eastern, and 3PM Pacific), which is about normal dinner time for most Easterners (I think), and during working hours for Pacific people, both time when most NA can’t play.

First world problems…

Winds.3087:

So why in the nine hells engineers have more potent mesmer-specific condition, than mesmers themselves? I find this highly offending.

Funny thing is, this topic doesn’t even seem to come up in the engineer forum. I guess it’s just part of the usual “I don’t understand mesmers, please nerf them” campaign.

Imagine the outrage if somebody proposed to nerf these the same way.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Dodge#Related_traits

CrassBippy.4619:

Iruwen.3164:

CrassBippy.4619:

Iruwen.3164:

Deniara Devious.3948:

They can apply many stacks confusion on a very large number of opponents from long range.

I’m playing a glamour mesmer, how exactly do I do that? Tell me please, because somehow I couldn’t figure that out in the last 100 hours I played that build.
Also see https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/The-inevitable-WvW-Confusion-nerf/page/2#post1774788
Most people commenting here simply make false claims about how confusion works and how to counter it. Coincidentially, many of the same people actually play thieves or eles…

If you’ve played over 100 hrs as Mesmer, we shouldn’t need to tell you how. It’s not false, also note I said 12 avg, and yes, you can get 15 stacks as a Mesmer since I’ve done it

I have played 500 hours as a memer, 100 hours with a glamour build. And you should really work on your reading comprehension. Maybe read what I quoted at all.

Deniara Devious.3948:

They can apply many stacks confusion on a very large number of opponents from long range.

The reason I was asking how to do this obviously wasn’t that I actually expected an answer, but to show that I wouldn’t get one (which you’ve proven by not providing one, thanks) because that statement is simpy false. Exactly the kind of uninformed exaggeration that makes discussions like this so ridiculous. People have no clue how the classes and confusion work and make false claims because they can’t deal with it.

this is in Spvp, with no + duration buffs or anything on armor, took me no time at all to do. i can already get 2 more clones on current wep to get 3 more stacks of confusion, then switch weapons and get another 3+ stacks along with interupts and boons for myself. hell im not even using a scepter.

But its impossible right? i dont know what im talking about, im just a scrub who spreads false information because i have an agenda!

Take this over to WvW and add another 50%+ to cond duration and alot more dmg. fun

PS – i pre-emptively accept your apologies

lol, wow dude, just… wow. What is wrong with you, seriously? Here’s the original post for you, again. For the third or even fourth time. Entropy instantly got it, why don’t you?
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/wuvwuv/Confusion/page/4#post1823167
Please also see this post where I even explicitly said that it’s not a problem to apply 12 stacks of confusion:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/wuvwuv/Confusion/page/6#post1835049
I know you must have “read” it (or at least noticed it) because you replied to it:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/wuvwuv/Confusion/page/6#post1835217

I’ll now quote it once more for you, then I officially give up:

Deniara Devious.3948:

They can apply many stacks confusion on a very large number of opponents from long range.

If you still don’t get what I was replying to, I don’t know how to help you any further. I’m not even having an argument with you, you just keep replying to something I never said