Guild Wars 2

Never judge a book by its cover!

It is not the event, it is the placement.

The placement is bad game design. For all the flaws listed.
We know, Vayne, that you will defend everything for the sake of defending it. That is OK, but you loose credibility if all you do is praising the Lord (ANet).

Menzzo Berranzan.8379:

Kaiyanwan.8521:

I said it when Tequatl was redone, I say it again, this is bad game design. It is the worst open world game design I have seen in 15 years of MMO gaming.

I couldn’t disagree with you more, this content is amazing, it requires strategy and intelligent thinking from the community. Clearly a huge number of players are also drinking it up and loving it.
For the most part map chat is friendly with very little omgwtf usuck infantile comments from players.
The commanders are doing a fine job. The rewards even for failure seem reasonable (which i will give, is a 1st in this game) And i might add even the overflows i have had the pleasure of playing in are getting close to sorting this fight out.

Because now the boss is the big new thing. It will be as dead as Tequatl on most any server after two weeks, a waste of development time and a toxic spot for people leveling in the zone.

Wow, sounds great!

Open world bosses with raid boss quality that actually require an insane raidsize and coordination in a non-endgame zone with limited player spots in the zone itself or you go into an overflow and is totally not appropriate for the level players have when they quest in the area?

I said it when Tequatl was redone, I say it again, this is bad game design. It is the worst open world game design I have seen in 15 years of MMO gaming.

KarinaCO.6948:

The DE nerf is not really a critical nerf to shatter specs, it just causes the players to use clones and dodges up more wisely. It’s not that hard to send 3 clones to shatter before dodging again since every shatter skill sends clones into seperate queues until it hits the target. But, it’s definately a critical nerf to clone-death builds.

I am still suprised how little people know about shatter after all this discussion going on on the board. As if it was about just getting out three illusions and blow them up and that’s it.

In the end, I think most people do not play shatter, because they have no clue about how it works, about positioning, about targeting, about spreading out clones, that you do not just shatter because it is off cooldown.

It is hard to blame some random Dev’s not knowing about the nuances of the mesmer gameplay, if even the mesmers themselves have no clue…

Best LS update to date I say!
Thank god they had like six weeks to polish the event to bring it to such greatness!

We need more of this.

Wow, 6 weeks to prepare the Living Story without any other content in the way.

And that is the Living Story now, waiting in some spot for 2 hours and nothing happens.

I totaly see how the LS improved now.

You can not tank in GW2. And no, being able to take more damage than the other players before going down does not equal tanking.

But you can sort of heal. Where is the consequence in that?

tetrodoxin.2134:

Noone with at least average knowledge about this game kills clones (melee) while fighting a condi Mesmer.

That is why I said this approach of the Dev’s would be dumb.

All longer fights consists of following mob AI:

1. Attack anything randomly.
2. Cast AoE

In rare cases:

3. Check distance, cast AoE

The strategy for all that is:

Bunch up in melee and beat the kitten out of the mob.

I have never seen so little variety in a RPG regarding to boss fights.

I quit playing the game, that is true. I just felt like spending some time on the forums as it is fairly entertaining.

I just explained tetrodoxin what Roy meant with his sentence, too late he made a long post in the balance forums already… ^^

The problem is that GW2 has taken away options how to play.

Less options less variety. Less variety less challenges. Less challenges less entertained players.

“replacing clones not triggering Debilitating Dissipation”

Still fail though.

Redball.7236:

This is what’s called being non-constructive and it’s why the devs will never post in these forums.

Why, watch the video, think about the balancing for the last year and a bit. I understand that the Dev’s might be in denial of their skills.
But the playerbase has the duty to point out when people in a position where they are responsible of what’s happening fail. Even if I risk a ban, I will say, for the sake of GW2, those people are having no clue and the people in charge have to reiterate the value of them as an asset to the company.
That is how companies work. You do not keep underperformer, just because they are part of the company. Not in a business with such high success pressure.

It is hard to keep customers pleased. It is ten times harder to find new customers. But in the end, it is nearly impossible to convince a customer that left out of utter disappointment to come back.

Why would the Dev’s try so hard to get rid of their actual playerbase then?

GW2 healed me from the idea, that there can be challenging and entertaining battles in a rpg without some form of trinity.

I will dodge all comments that will tell me I am wrong, because tanking them is not an option.

I hope they will hire an experienced Dev one day. This blind and stubborn activism is helping noone (well maybe the warriors).
They will do it and stick to it like the Tequatl fiasco. Wow. Undead encounter is dead.

Honestly, they can have my feedback for free on the board, I don’t see why they should hire me. But hey, if they want to spend some money, I would be glad to be the first person to work in the right now non-existant QA department of Arenanet.

Carighan.6758:

Demon.2430:

Hope they won’t do so cause it doesn’t help to support skilled players. For example, a lot of times you see the enemy healing (pvp) and you blink-dodge-F3 to daze the heal (if you don’t run Illusionary Persona). Now, sometimes it won’t work just cause you might have 3 clones up.

You know, two things:

1. One of your clones is close enough, and you just F3 right away.
2. None is, you press any other shatter, blink, dodge, F3. Or for that matter, blink, 2 (staff, aye?), F3. You’re skilled, so I’ll assume you won’t need the extra dodge clone while also not knowing how to work around having 3 clones out already.

Oh dear, you argument is:

1. Hope that the clone that is close won’t run away to a far away mob that he is bound to and waste the shatter.

- or -

2. Waste another shatter or hope that your skill clone generator is not on cooldown, while the enemy has all the time in the world to do whatever he does.

Looking at your approach to the situation, maybe you should join the balance team, as you seem as clueless as them…

Pyroatheist.9031:

Kaiyanwan.8521:

Phantasms will still be overwritten by skill clones, so that would be what phantasm mesmers want changed. No word about that in the video.

Except any decent phantasm mesmer doesn’t want that either. Skill clones are an important part of a mesmer’s utility and versatility (see: leap/swap etc.). Basically the original point that the guy made was just kitten.

Yeah, I could live with a toggle for clone generation on weapon skills or something. This would let people decide depending on the weapon and utility of the skill. But that’s a different topic.

The original point is just cheesy so to say.

Carighan.6758:

Not only clone-death spam. Phantasms-Mesmers have repeatedly asked for this exact feature, just specific to Phantasms.

Phantasm mesmers asking for a DE change because they want the trait? Why? This trait has nothing to do with phantasm builds. Every phantasm mesmer that takes DE is a BAD mesmer, it is that simple.

If this was part of the consideration, than it was a failure.

Phantasms will still be overwritten by skill clones, so that would be what phantasm mesmers want changed. No word about that in the video.

Honestly, I have played tons of MMOs, but I have never seen any of those try to destroy themselves with the passion that GW2 shows (maybe Star Wars Galaxy with NGE).
Ascended gear, Living Story, class balancing to a point where it is obvious that only warrior is loved by the Dev’s because the mechanics are simple enough for them to grasp.

Whoever has created the mesmer profession for GW2 must have left the ship long ago…

Watch the video, those guys have hardly any clue what they are talking about when they start talking about the mesmer. That’s why they have a hard time to explain what they changed.
Those clueless people are responsible for class balance, that is bad enough, but to understand what they wanted to say, you have to look at the mechanic they wanted to change and how it works with the “cheesy” gameplay. They want to stop clone generation by DE if 3 illusions are out to fix clone-death spam.

kolegam.5460:

Josh Davis.6015:

Hey mesmers,

For clarification: if you have 0-2 clones out and you dodge, you will summon a clone.

If you have 3 clones out and you dodge, nothing will happen.

Ok just explain me one thing.
If I have one phantasm and 2 clones it will be 3 illusions, so if I dodge I will summon clone because I have only 2 clones in the world.
I hope I am right because this way one phatasm in the world will go around this nerf.

Nope, if your three pink dots over the shatter skills are filled, you will no longer summon any clone by dodging with DE any longer. That’s what they meant.

This should read:

“Cheese on grilled cheese toast
considered too cheesy for ANet.
In upcoming balance patch, ANet removing
all cheese from grilled cheese toast.”

ANet logic at its finest!

The point is, this is not just about PvP balance, it is about all areas of gameplay. This is why it belongs here in the mesmer forum.

Someone will tell them that the mesmer forum is on fire at one point.

Alasteir.7031:

Kaiyanwan.8521:

I only explained why people get all emotional about it, that was your question, this is the answer. Don’t shoot the messenger.

Ah, I apologize. I sincerely wasn’t able to tell the difference.

Ah sorry, I meant it the way I said it though. Hope I didn’t confuse you too much. There are a times to explain things nicely, and there are times to smear the poop someone produced all over their face so they realize what they have actually produced and feel ashamed for it.

They should feel ashamed for how they handled this sensitive topic, so I did the latter.

I only explained why people get all emotional about it, that was your question, this is the answer. Don’t shoot the messenger.

The emotional part comes in, when a bunch of so called Dev’s sit together, throwing in a mechanism they do not even know what it is called in a video live stream (honestly, he was asked to change something and does not even know what it is) calling its usage cheesy (whatever that means) in PvP as reason for a major nerf that will result in drawbacks for other playstyles for all aspects of the game that are subpar already which they clearly missed totally while “fixing” it.

Kitten long sentence but it describes the impression of a bunch of people who are responsible for the balancing of a game who obviously have absolutely no clue what’s going on with the mesmer profession, breaking a whole lot of things by trying to fix one single thing in arena PvP.

If these guys are responsible for the profession and item advancement, all hope is lost.

Yeah, with this changes, shatter and clone-death is as dead as build variety in PvE.
Let’s see, will I run 10/20/0/25/15 phantasm or 0/30/0/25/15 phantasm. Oh gawd, all those choices, halp ANet, make one useless, otherwise I’m lost…

Soulseek.2867:

Well, it’s me again : D Now that I see things clearly, I have an even more amazing question:

What’s the point of this change, seriously? To encourage people to use the dodge button more responsibly? They already did this with the vigour nerf.

The aim of this change is to help Warriors with the brain of a dead horse to not get killed with the speed of a snail by clones around him he can not distinguish from the real mesmer in PvP. Otherwise, ANet will get in trouble with most of their PvP playerbase.

Warrior: “Uh, me not know wut is all that Mesmer, must punch all of Mesmer with big hammer now. Outch, it hurts ouch, must punch!”

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

Are we talking PvE or PvP? I never used Deceptive Evasion in PvE, I don’t even care.

For PvP I guess it is a slight buff since GS clone bleed got a relative buff. Although it was never that great to begin with since the clones don’t get fury like the pistol phantasms do.

It is a critical nerf for shatter and clone-death mesmers in PvE and PvP. What buff do you see with the DE change for non-phantasm builds?

I thought this was a thread about “Lazy Kai’s Build – Phantastic Phantasm”.
It is in my signature.

On the other hand, it seems that even most Mesmers do not grasp fairly simple shatter concepts like creating new clones for a new target by dodging and overwriting the old ones that are no longer relevant. Why the kitten would you want three clones on the wrong target, if you need some for the right one?

I fear only phantasm mesmers try to defend that abomination of a trait change, and they could care less (unless they take DE in their trait setup, than I couldn’t care less about them…)

Where did I miss the announcement that ANet will buff other clone generation methods?
I am fairly sure this will not happen, as it would just nullify the fix for DE.

This is just not going to happen. Nope.

Thank you for creating Guild Wars 2, a game I have spent many hours in, enjoying the world. Many of us have seen the game evolving for about one year and a half.

For the profession of the Mesmer, this evolving included some rather unpleasant adjustments, especially in the early days of balancing. But even now, looking into the not so distanced future, we have changes coming, that will again force players to change their playsyle.

I, for one, have bought GW2 to play PvE, not knowing that balancing around small group arena PvP is the main focus. But I also created a Norn for shapeshifting, well, everyone is a noob at one point. Some things are working, some things are not, that’s how you learn to get better with your profession and skills.

I also choose the Mesmer as my profession because of the idea of putting pressure on my enemy by confusing him with clones. That is porbably the reason, why I still like to play shatter, even though phantasm builds have surpassed shatter builds by a mile in PvE nowadays. I even switch to a clone-death build in PvE from time to time but it is so underpowered that I would not recommend it, unless you like experimental playstyles.

Unfortunately, there are some dark clouds on the horizon. What your Dev’s call “cheesing” is in fact a not so simple decision for shatter mesmers in PvE. You have to sacrifice a potential dodge for the chance to deal more damage, leaving you more vulnerable.
Now we all know how important dodge is in PvE, as it is the main source of mitigation. The simple concept also works for clone-death builds, just with the exception that those builds simply don’t work well in PvE.

“Mesmers are magical duelists who wield deception as a weapon. Using powerful illusions, clones, and phantasmal magic to confuse and distract their foes, mesmers make sure every fight is balanced in their favor and their opponents can’t believe their eyes.”

This is harldy true for PvE anymore right now, but if the latest changes go live, I think you might want to rewrite the profession’s description. You once said you want to strengthen build diversity, but I now realize this was meant for PvP.
In PvE, every patch pushes Mesmers more and more towards playing phantasm builds, as they are already the strongest setup and will be even stronger compared to other builds after this new balancing patch. What is confusing about phantasm though?

Shatter builds will loose vigor, one of the main resources for clone generation, clone positioning for a fast shatter with the DE change (sometimes you want a clone right where you are for a shatter and not wait for some seconds till the other ones have managed to run to their target if it is the right target at all) and with the berserker gear change, damage will be even worse than it is nowadays (educated guess). I have to kindly ask you if any of your playtesters has ever played a shatter mesmer to not see the consequences of your changes to this playstyle.

Any clone-death build for PvE will be as dead as the Tequatl event on my server. I don’t even need to explain why this is obvious.

The irony is, that you won’t change gear stats too much for PvP, just for PvE. Why won’t you be finally consequent and realize, that balancing around PvP won’t work for PvE. You cater to two different crowds, most people who play mainly arena PvP do not give a kitten about PvE. And most people focusing on PvE do not care too much about what is going on in high end tournaments.

Some of the Dev’s of the first Guild Wars game understood this simple concept. And they used this knowledge: They balanced PvP for PvP and PvE for PvE. Was it perfect? No. But what Arenanet is doing with GW2 is far far worse. You are breaking one part of the game for the sake of an other.

People will tell me to wait and see the changes first. Do so if you want. I won’t be around to see this changes go live. Someone made me an offer I can’t refuse.

I wish you the best with the progression of you game and hope (partly for personal interest) that you one day will manage to give us the build variety in PvE you were talking about.

Best regards

Kaiyanwan

They fixed Tequatl to make the encounter dead. We won!
I didn’t know that it was possible, but every time Tequatl spawns on my server, he does not hurt anyone for 15 min and then disappears.

This encounter is working as intended, as noone gets hurt and Tequatl is vanishing because of boredom without causing any trouble.

Do not disturb the peaceful equilibrium. Leave the dragon alone, as we all do. Shhh, shhhh…

ANet is going to take a hit by players being angry as kitten.

I do not plan to stay long enough to see this abomination of a “balance”-patch going live, breaking the game even more. I for one have spent enough time with this game, seeing it going South from November 2012. In the end, it just helps me to let go.

The gras is always greener for some time when things are new and shiny. Time to get the thrill of something new.

No you cannot have my stuff, I still have the irrational hope that maybe in some years, ANet will come to their senses (or at least fire the whole Dev team), and this game will become the game we were promised…

Don’t forget Confusing Combatants (Dueling 25).

Like in my Rollin’ Trollin’ Build it is harder to find a trait that has not been nerfed than the nerfed ones…

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fgAQRAsc7anUE1UbRNC1gWjExUhgDlCs76IVo0K9g3uwcD-jwxAYrkRUSWyrIas1sioxqWwUlER1ejioVDA-e

If you have three clones up and dodge with DE, the oldest clone will be destroyed and will apply on-death effects while a new clone is spawned.
After the patch, nothing will happen.

See the picture?

Nike.2631:

Josh Davis.6015:

Hey mesmers,

For clarification: if you have 0-2 clones out and you dodge, you will summon a clone.

If you have 3 clones out and you dodge, nothing will happen.

Yeah, I’m 99% certain that’s NOT what they were describing.

The only change I see that would create is you could no longer replace injured clones. Its barely a change at all, and it doesn’t correspond to the rest of what they were saying. You don’t talk about a footnote as long and as nervously as they did.

Would you mind double checking with the Skill and Balance team, because they may changed to that in the last few hours, but I can’t believe something that trivial is what they were discussing in the live-stream.

I think you are missing the point. This is a major nerf for builds with traits that apply effects when a clone dies. Not trivial at all.

Critical Infusion is a major nerf for shatter builds. And shatter is not even meta in PvE or PvP or WvW.
Making a subpar build worse? GG ANet. Now PvE consists of Phantasm builds only. PvE build variety is down to 10/20/0/25/15 phantasm or 0/30/0/25/15 phantasm!
How awesome is that?

I have rarely played in the last 4 weeks (all together maybe 3h), and I cannot see how this will help me to come back.
This will just mean less build variety for PvE. Phantasm is the only way to go. Less vigor means less clones to blow up for shatter (which is not in the best spot for PvE right now). The DE change means that clone bombing becomes even more useless in PvE (it needed a buff instead for PvE, maybe a second melee clone option).
Now giving me 2 sigil spots on a 2h just means that I will have to put some vigor sigil in just to keep shatter working.

Stupid Dev’s should get their heads out of their bloody PvP meta kitten.

I said it, I will probably get an infraction. I don’t care. This game will never be a real eSports no matter how hard they try. On the other hand they kitten up their PvE and WvW players.

Stupid! Thinking about to give ANet a personal visit just to tell every single person there that they are dumb.

I remember the time, when you could still abuse the asian language input to write in gigantic letters. Good times, but this might be the reason why cyrillic is not supported right now, sorry.

Saw a fair amount of leveling questions lately, so I thought I would simply bump my guide. ^^

Of all the things, ANet has done wrong in their mindless crusade to improve their world, killing the fun of defeating a dragon for the majority of the community in a mid-level open-world zone was probably the greatest crime.

- Players who are in the area, just because they have the “right” level for the playfield cannot beat the event
- Players who want to beat the event need to organize themselves in an open word zone with a limited amount of spots (else you are moved to an overflow)
- A few players can troll the event every single time (turrets)
- You need tons of players for the event, and have to be there when it starts, or else you will run out of time
- No scaling depending on players makes this one of the least varied fights in the game

I could go on, but I really hope, that ANet got a drawing board for christmas, as they missed using one for the first revamp.
Bad game design is bad.

This one is at least up-to-date:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Guide-Kai-s-Complete-PvE-Compendium/first#post2848334

Crafting in GW2 is the second biggest disappointment in GW2. Uninspired, boring, predictable. It is set up so difficult, that figuring it out by yourself as a newbie, you will waste tons of ressources. But if you understand the system behind it (or just use a guide), it is the same simple scheme put over every level of every profession.

In other words, it is stupid to spend time on it, and in the end, the only level a profession is worth something is the max level, as they made ascended items account bound (seriously, crafting stuff for yourself is the goal of crafting professions?). So everyone has to level professions for themselves, or they will be left behind – awesome game design, should give a reward. That’s how crafting works in reality, all those expensive clothes are only worn by the designer themselves too after all.

The biggest disappointment though was, wait for it, ascended items.

Now the core progression of the game combines the two biggest failures of GW2. Thank god for the steam holiday sale!

Always swiftness would be too much, but a constant 25% speedboost would be very welcome (the idea is as old as the 25% speed utility skills of other classes though)…

I once thought about writing a leveling guide for necros as I did for mesmers.
But leveling a necro was so straight forward and easy that I just moved on.

The following link might help:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Guide-Kai-s-Complete-PvE-Compendium/first#post2848334

^^

Protoavis.9107:

2h weapons base damage is higher than 1h weapons, it’s like having a built in sigil of force

The base damage of a weapon tells you exactly nothing at all about the potential damage of the weapon for a class.

People get always blinded by the stats though, which is telling you that they have no idea about the game mechanics… ^^

It will be fixed sooner or later, 2h weapons will have 2 slots. Too lazy to search for the dev post… ^^