Also keep in mind that due to it being ranged, iDuelists has a better chance of staying up against AoE targeting vs Swordsman if you’re playing close to your opponent, which mainhanding sword will do for you good for having continual focus fire on the target.
I’m running offhand pistol right now, as much as I love offhand sword.
Ok, OP mesmer here.
I don’t find any more of an issue against Spirit Weapon Guardians than I do against other Mesmers. In fact, these types of guardians are easier to take down as their less bunker.
The issue here is that the weapons are free to attack whomever they want, which means when you’re stealthed they’re really uncertain as to where to go. Tossing up clones and phantasems while focusing down on the Guardian himself makes this just a war of attrition. The more defensive built mesmers will find this quite easy, while the Glass Cannon mesmers may want to range out the weapons and play the harassment game.
I can honestly say that I have not encountered this specific build on my thief, necromancer, elementalist, or engineer yet so no comment on those.
Eh, I expect scorpion wire to get fixed soon, other than that, minimal changes to Thief.
Thieves do not serve as point defense, it’s simply too difficult to do so in their class structure. It’s possible, but far, far outshined by the stronger bunker classes.
They are, however, incredibly good at assiting a defense, and capturing of a Point, which, paired with their stealth and movement speed, solidify their role as roamers.
Trying to place thief in a defensive bunker role is just bad approach to the class. They’re better moving from point to point, undetected and assisting an ally bunker by staying out of the constant visual spectrum of the fight and providing harassment/spike damage.
They’re also good at assassinating other roamers in transit to points.
Yes, in a capture the point game, thieves can fall off when it comes to bunkering down on the point. But the full of the game is much more than that. Enemies have to get to the points, they have to keep and defend them. And Thief excells at the type of harassment and assasination that comes with a class that has powerful stealth and movement skills.
TL;DL, if you play a thief, play a roamer.
What is it with you people and how terrible you are dealing with portals?
Camp your best 1v1er on the Trebuchet once the Mesmer flees. DO NOT destroy the Trebuchet until the mesmer returns via portal. The Mesmer wastes his time going to the repair kit before it’s up and will have to travel back.
Leaving the Treb on low life insures that the next time he mouts the treb, the treb will be quickly destroyed by your roamer, you then camp the treb portal.
Your team can tell you if the Mesmer has given up on the Treb to help assault/defend a point, at that point you can destroy the treb and push a separate point/gank contested point.
Sorry but Mesmer portal is pathetically predictable, and not broken in the least.
I love how those who don’t play mesmer as a main, seem to know exactly how to play the class and what they do exactly.
Most times when people think I’m hiding back and just chucking AI’s at them, I’m really one of the ‘clones’ they think are fake, as Mesmer’s Damage actually drops significantly if they’re not doing damage themselves. The harassement behind closed doors is typically to keep pressure until the Mesmer can recover or reach into range. (Most players are trying to LoS ME, not the other way around.)
Issues about continual Regen and Protect: This Protect/Regen effect, or more specifically the Regen effect that causes protect to occur, is limited by phantasm range. If the Mesmer is being granted with this, it mean’s hes near his phantasems aka, vulernable.
Again, there are only two Phantasems that appear in a direction associated to the enemy, iBerserker, and iWarden, and one of them is terrible for s/tPvP. All others spawn in relation to the Mesmer casting it, and will only attack once they’re in range of the opponent (or dissipate if they walk out of the Mesmer’s maximum control range.)
As stated ad nasuem, AoE destroys Phantasms and Clones easily, and gut a lot of the Mesmer’s damage an utility doing so. This makes Bunker Engineers, Necros, and Elementalists powerful against them.
Players who ‘feel dirty’ playing Mesmer should find better opponents.
You know, the complaint that it hard counters bunker builds has actually put me int a situation where I might think it needs to stay as opposed to being removed entirely.
Right now, aside from Moa, bunker builds have no hard counters, not in the manner of which that causes the bunker to fail at its objective. And to be frank, there needs to be that in the sPvP game. I’d argue there needs to be MORE of that to place bunker builds back on the level of other build types.
It’s a 3 minute cooldown, which makes it very unwieldy to use beyond a single purpose. Lowering its duration would likely come at a lower recharge rate which would make things even worse for bunkers. (It doesn’t take even 5 seconds to kill a Moa trying to stand on most points.)
On a side note, glass cannon thieves seem to be thinning in number now, that’s a good sign.
So, is sPvP basically only for Necros, Mesmers, Thieves, and Elementalists?
in PvP
Posted by: Kalar Meadia.8439
Any time a projectile comes into contact with the field circle, from without or within, the projectile is reflected.
The Utility Ability is focused around a target enemy, unfortunately, the only way to make it field around yourself is if the enemy targetd is at point blank. Works well when trying to focus down an enemy who has an ally attacking you from ranged, if you’ve got the focus target pinned.
There is an ability called “Medic’s Feedback” that employs the same field around you when you attempt to resurrect an ally. This is the only case in which yourself or an ally is considered a target for the ability.
Two things I’ve noticed, Jon.
First off, members in party that join do not get the typical red/blue colors unless on an opposing team. Don’t know if you’ve fixed that in a recen’t patch or not, but this reveals that the coloring is either a graphic mask, or the memory for player’s armor color gets stored client side.
That’s more than enough grounds to create an Option for players to turn off ally ‘jersey’ colors for the match, or at the very least, our own. It is kind of a downer that someone who’s taken the time to chose colors for their own outfits to not be able to see them in match.
It’s only important that the colors of other players are uniform, and advanced players can already determine friend or foe without the visiual assistance on the armor. (Again, for most of us who play Moba, a Red Name is all we need.)
There are a lot of comprehensive additions to your sPvP lobby, UI, and queuing system that would help raise it’s status from an eSports ‘hopeful’ to an actual entity in eSports, creating more user options for visuals are some of the easier steps to take.
Hmm.
This might be an issue with cross servers. Remember that people in WvW on other servers tend to default to a specific color as well? This may save on memory usage to have a set default color skin across it all and might not be possible to see everyone elses colors they way they programmed it.
Now, that said, I see no reason why I cannot see my own chosen colors for my character and simply be the default red/blue/green to other people.
People keep comparing the balance in this game to other games and it just doesn’t work like that. This game is a whole new monster with its own rules.
Bunkers in other games are completely different. They usually have high hp, high armor, and passive avoidance and mitigation. The bunkers in GW2 gain survivability through healing, boons, active dodging/blocking, and knockbacks/cc. In this game, burst counters bunker by being able to hit hard and fast before the bunkers can react. But a guardians retaliation is owning burst builds because it is up way too often.
I’ll concede the inversion of the balance cycle if adjustments are made to solidify the method.
Meaning they need to weaken burst builds against sustained damage builds so that going glass cannon does not out preform every other build type.
Right now, that’s not the going case. If burst can counter bunker, then burst can counter everything right now, because many sustained damage lacks the control and damage reduction function to turn it around on a glass cannon – current standing exception to the rule being Mesmer, due to their ability to trait defensively while gearing offensively. In which case, Mesmer is functioning as intended and a lot of classes need some defensive buffs. (Or more players need to trait defensively.)
Downed state is ok. But in sPvP all professions need to have the same Skill Set
in PvP
Posted by: Kalar Meadia.8439
Should make Fear from Necro AoE.
Ele should have an ice ability that freezes enemies or freezes themselves and makes them immune to being finished for a few seconds.
Thief’s Stealth and Teleport should be combined as one skill. Give them a detonating projectile move that damages and knocks down enemies.
Engineers and Rangers should remain untouched, they have Ults that revive them instantly if premeditated, and their down skills are not horrible.
Warriors success rate on Revenge’s revive should be higher.
That should balance things.
I have to wonder what you are building to be so slow. The only ‘slow’ I see from my mesmer is a difference in movement speed when traversing maps, and there are ways you can stack effect rotations to keep yourself sprinting for quite a while + blinking.
Damage wise… I don’t know what’s wrong with your build but if you’re lacking in damage you need to study what dictates a Mesmer’s damage and how you wish to deal it. (Burst? Conditions? From you or from the phantasms?)
You’re free to leave the class as you chose, but I can’t shake the feeling that you haven’t tapped the potential of the class, and in failing to do so you found it slow. If you’d like we can go over builds/equipment etc with you and help ya spruce up your Mesmer game a bit.
But the first question that needs to be answered is “What are you looking for in a Mesmer?”
Some of Mesmer’s attacks are bounces (Gsword 2, Staff 1, Pistol 5)
Some of Mesmers’s attacks are AoEs, (Small one on Sword 3, Sword 5 [small damage] Staff 5, 2 of Mesmer’s Shatters + 1 if traited.)
2 Of Mesmer’s Phantasms (Beserker, Warden) attack in an limited AoE fashion.
Combined, Mesmer can do a lot of AoE effects throughout the fight, something that is often underestimated in team fights. I consider knowledge and usage of these things to be one of the differences between bandwagon and knowledgeable Mesmers.
I donno, my tolerance for threads like these is exhausted. It shows a lack of any real investment in the game and basing feedback not from knowledge, but from ignorance and sheer knee-jerk reactions to mechanics who’s counters are already well known.
100b’s builds do not survive in tPvP, they’re not even surviving well in sPvP anymore due to how easily they get crushed, so that argument is out the window.
The “Four Pets” issue is a gripe about Necros and Mesmers, which is hilarious because Mesmers can only have 3 (Show’s your not paying attention to the fight.) and Necromancer pet builds actually suffer bad experiences in sPvP.
Put simply, if you’re not enjoying your build, play a different one. You don’t have to go out spending your entire game looking for opportunities to blow your lolblades combo.
As far as the OP’s adjustment’s. There’s a phrase that comes to mind: Not a snowballs’ chance in hell.
So, is sPvP basically only for Necros, Mesmers, Thieves, and Elementalists?
in PvP
Posted by: Kalar Meadia.8439
Mesmer
When fighting Mesmers you are looking for 3 things:
-Mesmers apply a condition called CONFUSION which deal damage to you everytime you attack. Make sure to remove it.
-Mesmers have phantasms which deal an enormous amount of damage to you. CC the Mesmer and Barrage the area.
-Mesmers have Chaos Storm (DO NOT WORK IN OR STAY IN THIS LARGE PURPLE DOME OF DEATH).You are also forgetting Feedback, it can EASILY kill someone that goes for the burst when its up – If you see it move OUT before you ANY attacks. I play Mesmer and rarely use Confuse but thats because of the build i play – keeping Illusions up rather then destroying them
Keep in mind that moving out will not be enough for Feedback. None of your ranged attacks can hit the bubble in any way shape or form, which means even if you move out, a Mesmer can move in or keep the bubble between you.
Move forward through the bubble and knock the mesmer back on the other side before he can close in on it. If he does get inside it, wait it out to attack.
Yep, no shortage of altaholics here. All suggestions made here thus far a good ones.
My alt addiction is unique (I make characters in MMOs based off of old imaginary characters I made up as a child.) so it’s hard for me to make any suggestions made on mechanics.
There are far more powerful factors in this game than quickness. To refer to it as a singularly broken mechanic above all others is just inaccurate. It is dangerous, but it is meant to be as such.
Reflection/Retaliation, Cripple, Stun, Fear, Stealth for goodness stakes any class with a duration-based block ALL hard counters to quickness and its uses.
For Warrior’s 100b burst combo on Mesmer, the most guarenteed evasion result is Blink.
Shoot it behind them as they’re coming in on you and you’re golden for a counter attack.
Barring that, keep Phantasmal Guardian out. Even their full burst won’t kill you when they’re dealing half damage + a likely Protection buff on top of that.
That’s if you’ve gotten caught. The best way for a mesmer to counter a warrior is to go on the offensive against them. Even the tanky ones die faster than say a Tanky Necro or Guardian.
You kidding me, quickness is a minor problem at best. Anything large is on a minor cooldown and anything single character buff is easily counterable, not to mention classes that run it tend to be easily and quickly squished.
It takes an organized team to even properly use Quickness properly, and an organized team can counter it just as easily.
Seriously, quit griping that you got outplayed or caught off guard and learn from it please.
Would be nice if NA started a branch like this. Sounds like the potential of making player-made leagues.
It would be nice if there were channels ‘designated’ for more serious sPvP, and I for one would enjoy some more organized play in general as I’ve yet to join a sPvP guild but am starting to want to.
The misuse of the term isn’t my folly. It’s people placing down a bad title for a role.
The concept is to hold a point against enemies long enough for allies to come in. If burst damage counters this, the role becomes useless. Atrition damage allows the role to be viable but counterable.
Right now, as the meta exists, burst damage counters sustained damage builds. And more durable/defensive builds counter burst damage by blocking the burst and countering it.
The issue is the condition/AoE damage that’s supposed to weather these tanks down are not sucessfully doing so. Enabeling Burst Damage to counter them enables Burst Damage to counter all three role types (Burst counters itself as well) and it becomes a game of ‘who can catch who off guard for a split second’.
That’s not a viable dynamic.
Right now, Jon’s statments are in exact opposite of what should happen to make a healthy s/tPvp, and in stark contrast to any eSport game. (You don’t burst a tanky, they’ll survive or even if they don’t, the enemy team will collapse upon you unless your target was caught out of position/in CC.)
If they’re going to try to turn tPvP into an eSport, they’re going to have to start paying attention to the dynamics of eSports.
for s/t PvP Bleeds aren’t so important due to the fact that enemies die too quickly for them to be fully staked up, and crit damage tends to do more bonus damage in an offensive build than Condition Damage.
In PvE this changes, as fights can wind up being longer and the bleed advantage stacks up, especially with so much time spent in evasion.
However, unlike in s/tPvP, you can actually achieve a balance between them as well, and the optimal overall build is actually splicing it.
Of course, this is all assuming we take an offsensive role in our usage. We have some pretty powerful support builds as well.
Again, I disagree with this idea the burst damage is the counter to bunker, (It’s the other way around, you’re supposed to have the skill to counter burst damage, but lose in drawn out fights where you’re focused.) but some of his statments there are correct.
He’s saying we should ignore him because he dosen’t play the game anymore and is just moaning around waiting to see if they’ll listen to his griping.
Sorry but I’ve no tolerance for this ill informed nonsence. Nor the time to properly educate someone as to the classes they know nothing about.
If you don’t like Guild Wars 2, don’t play it.
Donno why you did, other than being interested in Warrior. A lot of the common tropes players complain about mesmer (Time Warp, Moa, portal), I simply don’t use.
I don’t even run a ‘glass cannon’ or ‘bunker’ build. I run defensive traits and abilities with offensive gear-sets, and the class balances out well for it. For some reason doing that is ‘broken’ even though it can take me quite a while to kill a tanky enemy, and I can still die quickly if I don’t actively keep my defenses up and in the right order.
It’ll probably take a while for people to settle down and settle into working builds for each class. I’m about where I want to be for Mesmer and are already exploring interesting builds on other professions.
Except no where in any single one of my posts could you ever find me defending iWarden – ever.
I even admit that Portal-repair lies on a grey area with me even know it’s easily counter-able.
So nice try Gank, but you’re speaking about a reasonable human being here.
Yeah I’ve no problem with the imagry of the class.
It’s like people making fun of a brony, they don’t care. Except in a Mesmer’s case, they really don’t care cause they can trick anyone into an early grave.
The answer has already been stated: Condition damage.
In general it needs to be more effective. As stated before, Guardian has a wide variety of condition removals, while area effects that cause conditions are not as persistant. Duration increases in Condition fields, particuarlly Necromancer would be a powerful boon against bunker builds.
But bunker builds are MEANT to be stalling. They’re meant to make it so they’re buying time for the teammates to come help. This function shouldn’t be removed, just adjusted so that the lenght of time is not so long. The answer isn’t making bunkers more vulnerable to burst, that just ruins the purpose of building anything but burst damage.
Just make it so that the bunker can be worn out quicker, with the roles that should be more of a presence than they are.
To me it’s somewhat of a disapointment that there is any build at all that requires more than 1 to take it down.
Just like it’s a disapointment some glass canons are nearly impossible to react to.
See, both of these are misnomers.
1 Person can take down a bunker, it just takes a long time to do so, and, if you’re not built correctly, yes, they can pull you into a stalemate. That’s the design of a bunker. If it takes two people to take one bunker down at all, it means one person is being effectively countered by the bunker and shouldn’t be wasting his time on him, but instead should be focusing other targets.
As far as not being able to counter glass cannons, this is an awareness issue. If you can’t beat one, you’re gearing or playing wrong. Glass cannons are by far the easiest to kill, and every profession can do so.
It’s not a game issue if you get caught off guard or out played. And there is a wide difference between a good burst damage player and a bad one. The bad ones die very easily and the good ones will wait until they can catch you.
The issue with those is just learning how to be prepared for them, always keep some sort of defense at the ready.
There’s a larger root meta problem going on here that is explaining a lot of player’s symptoms, which is the lack of AoE/Condition presence in s/tPvp. These need to be made more attractive to players as they serve to address a lot of concerns players have.
Glass Cannons that have to enter an AoE field to reach their target are going to melt regardless of slealth, or have to pull away and not do their burst. And Bunker classes are worn down by the same AoE/Condition sections that are being neglected.
We’re already seeing an emerging trend of AoE Zergs using group numbers and mass field damage to wrack up kills and win every engagement. (It’s not any more effective than a full glass cannon group, mind you, but it proves my principle correct.) This trend woulden’t occur if AoEs and conditions were more effective than they are.
tl;dl? Buff/Fix Necro and Elementalist Conditions/AoEs.
(edited by Kalar Meadia.8439)
Not sure if I agree with Jon’s idea of the meta here.
Bunker is supposed to be the counter to burst, not the other way around. If you bunker down, you’re supressing against burst damage so you don’t die in an instant and live long enough for reinforcements. That part is working how it should., it’s not the job of a burst class to take down the bunker, but to quickly eliminate its reinforcements.
It’s your steady DPS that need to be successful against bunkers. You enable build type to take the role of another and that build type will rule the meta just as badly as Guardians do now.
Lowering retaliation is good, but there needs to be improvements in the classes that work well with AoE and condition damage so that those builds are more effective at their roles.
Typically I stun immediately before swapping so an enemy has to blow both stun break and immobilize clear if they’re on separate cool-downs.
But there is a VERY small window between swap and blurred frenzy, half a second at absolute most, unless the mesmer is faking you out. (I’ll swap into distraction to fake out someone’s stun breakers and status clears if blurred frenzy is on cooldown. There’s always Magic Bullet to lock them down into frenzy.)
But yes, Mesmers ONLY immobilize is Swap, so it’s guaranteed that if they use it, they’re in melee range.
Warden works fine without the trait. You summon it on a focus objective point, especially if you intend on meleeing it, blurred frenzy and shatter when it’s done with rotation.
The cooldown on it traited was horrendously broken. Though I think they overcompensated on it a bit given its stationary nature. Still I use it for little more than placement defense/offense anyways. It effectively assists me with point attacks while keeping ranged damage of of me for a few needed seconds for blurred frenzy cooldown.
Beyond that, it’s a good traveling tool.
I think trolling is a horrible focus for a thread.
I’ll put it this way. I have no exact line of sight between me an my opponent. I’ve noticed that the distance in summoning is slightly shorter, but I can still catch an enemy I cannot see. iZerker seems to spawn further away in this instance, however.
I’ve not tested yet if this works on different height levels yet. Which means summoning Zerkers on walls may still be possible, though, in those cases I’d rather pull the enemys off the walls and into the zerg, or place the way so that their ranged reflects back.
Not mourning the loss of super-warden abit, however. That was clearly broken, and I used the normal cooldown one just fine.
Nope, can still activate iZerker without line of sight. Whatever exploit other mesmers were using, I wasn’t using it. Good to know.
Never encountered the bug. Always cleared the status effect into a dodge or died before it ended.
Blink also ends the issue pretty promtly as you’re repositioned.
As far as encoutnering bugs in the game, welcome to the game’s first year. I have not met a single online game that wasn’t absolutely swarmed with bugs on release – yet people seem to think this standard never existed before.
It’s always existed, bugs have been in pretty much every game since inception. Heck, we chronicle some of them as gaming’s greats.
Merciless pretty much described the reason why I’m married to Greatsword on Mesmer. Berserker AoE + Bouncing sword attack + having illusions spawn at point blank for shatters.
Still, unlike other AoE specialists, (or Chaos storm, our ONLY damage field.) I’ve got to have a valid target for all of those.
@Kalar: If being forced to explore slower doesn’t impact your gaming experience, great. Personally I don’t see any trade-off at all, because that would have to be something so powerful and unique to Mesmers that it justifies having to do virtually everything slower than all other professions. And what would that be?
I’m struggeling by your definition of “Everything”
I can burst down an enemy at fairly impressive speeds, because I can engage with my phantasems at range.
Swordsman, Duelists, Illusionary Leap+Swap, Blurred Frenzy, Shatter is higher than 100b burst if done right, and you can use decoy and Mirror images for a second shatter still too.
Mesmers also have the best distraction vs both AI and players in the game as we have both clones and sealth for PC, and both our clones and phantasms distract AI. Not to mention our crowd and area control (We bunker nearly as well a Guardian.)
We are also the most versitile of classes. We can completely change our role depending on our trait specs. Damage, Support, Control? We have it all in abundence. We are walking swiss army knife that doubles as an army of paper tigers.
The trade off for all of this is that we are methodical. Our start up is slower, our travel is slower. All of this revolves around an air of premeditation that allows us to bypass this issue. Enemy trying to flee? Magic Bullet iBerserker, Sigil of Domination, etc.
Know you may have to retreat or return to a location you’re passing by or are at? Portal Entre.
Traversing the world for the first time is longer, I conceeded that, but this isn’t an issue for me because of all of the above. I spend my time in PvP with a Focus, Signet of Inspiration and Blink anyways. (Sword/Focus and Staff for maximum single point DPS and protection/boon abuse.) So I get the most out of what travel we get.
But I don’t feel a loss against other classes because they can move faster. They’re a different feel and experience than Mesmer, and I don’t begrudge it traveling slower.
I don’t know. I avoid staff usage and condition builds as it clashes with my personal style of the class. (Sword user.)
I’ve attempted the use of sword and staff before, and while I found the ability to pretty much be everywhere on screen entertaining (as you’re never really sure where I am.) I was having difficulty transforming it into an effective build for long term use in sPvP.
I’ll eventually re-attempt it but I’m finding good fortune with an offensively-geared, defensively traited build.
Mesmer’s have one immobilize, and it has a tell of a clone leaping at you, it can only immobilize if the clone is in melee range of you, the trade of is it is AoE.
Mesmers do, however, have 2 stuns and 3 dazes (one of which is a mantra, all dazes can be traited for a 50% chance of a 1 second stun.) As well as both a draw-in and a knock back.
NOT including weapon abilities. Mesmers have no imobalizes (Forced to use Sword for imoba) 2 Dazes, and 1 stun.
So yeah, Mesmers have a lot of single target CC and a couple good group CCs.
As far as issues with immobilization. Teleport techniques bypass Immobilization, and many condition removal skills also serve as stun-breakers.
Last but not least, Lyssa’s Rune set removes ALL Conditions on use of Elite skill. (As well as granting ALL Boons.) Immobilization is included in this.
Put shortly, admit that you got chain CCed or caught off guard and move on.
Each and every Mesmer Build has a counter to them. The common bottom denominator to all of them is AoE damage and condition fields. Mesmers have to trait a VERY specific way to continually counter conditions and even then it’s at the sacrifice of their strongest offense and defense.
Mesmers currently have no strong counters to AoE damage, tends to wipe out clones and phantasems easily. Paired with condition fields it is typically a surefire way to wear a mesmer out quickly and kill them.
I’ve explained this several times, I have seen it in practice on both sides of the field and have even contributed. Yet the forums seem to remain ignorant of it.
Longest Condition Duration combination is not full nightmare Runes.
It is 2 Runes of Lyssa + Remaining nightmare runes for a total of +20% condition duration from runes.
Confusion is too hard to stack for this to be relevant.
Traited cry of frustration at melee range with full illusions line is 8 stacks, this can immediately be comboed with any etherial field combinations from allies for more, not including scepter usage.
(edited by Kalar Meadia.8439)
Again, you only mention two types of damage when there are three.
AoE/Condition combination damage will destroy a mesmer as well as his sources of regen and protection. Keep the point pelted with these abilities, especially with Poison and the Mesmer’s condition/boon removal won’t be enough to counter the full scope of the damage.
You can knock a bunker mesmer away from point to capture the point ,but the concept of killing him will rely upon keeping him in the AoE effects . Staff/Well Necro + Bleed Thief work wonders at tearing a bunker mesmer down. (The fear + Scorpion Cord will also do well to rip him off point and keep him pinned.) Bunker mesmers are useless to their points if they are forced to stealth.
Similar ends can also be achieved with combinations including Elementalist.
They’re running a reflection bunker build. The bubble over you isn’t a trait as it is a utility skill that reflects your projectiles back at you.
If he’s running offhand focus, then likely has traited his focus skills to reflect projectiles as well. Pair this off with runes of blood, regeneration/protection phantasems setup, and powerful healing runes, and he can generally sit there forever against a ranged opponent and hold a point. Melee would have trouble due to the constant DPS from Warden paired off with condition and reflection damages.
The counter to this is to use attacks that cannot be reflected at range, Namedly, AoE damage and AoE condition effects. This is a Necromancer’s and Elementalist’s preview, though Thieves can also do this when traited correctly, and they’ll be necessary for choice interrupts and to pull them out of bunker.
In the end these same counters work for Guardian as well so you need to keep this in mind. Condition removal and transfer skills will stall out the fight but it will prevail, especially if your’e stacking condition fields with high condition damage.
The major problem here is that you cannot burst these kinds of builds, which means when you engage, expect reinforcements, and expect to have to build tanky yourself. Compositions like this is mainly use to provide a strong presence against a bunker to draw attention away from a point vulnerable enough to burst, or to pressure both and capitalize on where the reinforcement is weakest.
I’m still wondering what the heck the issue here is. Why are you worried about being forced to explore slower on Mesmer? I rather like the trade off, given every other utility I have in my possession.
Not that I’m against an adjustment, it’s just that I’m not concerned over the stated relevance of this issue. As far as getting rid of the Signet of Inspiration, I’d question that. The active on it is to spread all boons onto the party, and that can be amazing with Lyssa runes.
Woulden’t mind it having a trait that increased movement spead base off of readied mantras. We could tie it into existing mantra traits, as well as other buffs to Mantras in general.
I think it would harm participation in Quick-join greatly, and there would have to be an overhaul of the system before it could even be implimented, but I’m not against the philosophy.
Balanced teams do better, each class has more fun when there are other classes to play with and against, some of which they are even strong against, rather than constantly facing enemies that are built strong against your profession’s strongest builds. (coughnecrocough)
It would be nice if there was an active lobby interface that shows you the status of a game you’re selecting to join. Aka, who’s there on what team, and what team you’d likely be joining when you hop in. This will allow people to be more selective as to what games they join and then we can see more balance among actual lobbies.
Glad someone is actually posting the data here.
A lot of people worry about ‘this class is op’ when in casual play it really isn’t. My biggest gripe is popularity issues between classes less than function ones. This just means that some classes need some added flair or more representation for their popularity to kick up a notch.
Thieves and Mesmers are obvious in their popularity mainly because of the issue that they’re ‘trickly’ classes and players love to believe they’re smarter/better than their opponent, when really it’s just the mechanics playing into their hands. I’ve no such ego on my classes. Each class I play adheres to a ‘character’ I have created for various reasons in my life, or, I make a new character persona to fit them.
Whether I do well or poorly is rather irrelevant in that context. Only time I’m really worried about ‘serious play’ is tPvP, and only then, in practice for paid tournaments – which the game will get adjustments before that occurs anyways.
Last night I played games in which I was the only Mesmer for quite a while, yet the thief population was bloated. However, the team with the most thieves were also consistently losing against more balanced teams.
It’s slow going but things in sPvP are starting to settle down, though tPvP still feels like they have to play every exploit (When it isn’t true.) Overall though, even with people complaining here, I feel as if people are realizing some classes are not as broken as they initially seem.
Not that there won’t be adjustments, just that these adjustments are not as huge as people rant about.
^ you don’t have to reroll a counter, you just need ONE person out of 5 that CAN deal with a guardian. Despell is as important as any cc/stun break/movement ability in pvp- period.
A Guardian is not there to counter a single class, nor should a single class be there solely to counter Guardians.
Fatal flaw in your logic is that you’re not countering Guardians, you’re countering Bunker players.
And yes, you do have to have a class to counter a tactic. Is Guardian the best at bunkering down? In the right hands, yes. And there always will be one class that’s best at a specific type. Sorry, but that’s the way the world works. The only way to make a game truely blanced like that would be to remove professions all together, and that’s not happening because people like to be ‘unique’.
So keep that in mind. You’re building against a bunker, not against Guardian specificly. But Guardian’s are not the only bunker class. Engineer, Mesmer heck even Elementalists fit this term. But Guardian’s got the best knockback, retaliation, and anti-burst equasion in his kit, which is why it’s popular.
It’s not the most effective according to the full span of game mechancis, because it does have hard counters – they’re on unpopular classes. Most of these classes, however, preform well in their own rights.
Again, my biggest complaint about structured PvP isn’t class balance right now. It’s elo. This section needs it. Both for the players and the developers. The players so that the good players can actually explore and discover powerful tactics, and the pub-stomping in hotjoin begins to settle out. For the developers where they can actually analyze the PvP game better for more accurate adjustments.
And that’s really got to happen before sweeping nerfs happen. Buffs? I can understand.
‘Broken’, ‘bugged’, ‘substandard’ – I am not going to argue about semantics here. Maybe ‘broken’ was a bit hyperbolic since technically the PvP works. It just is no fun due to several problems which should have been addressed before release – and since that is the ultimate goal of a game, well …
Also justifying the premature release with ‘people being anxious’ does not really cut it considering the company mantra of releasing stuff ‘when it is ready’. Where was that attitude when they decided on the release date? People are also anxious now about Anet finally releasing some info about the future of PvP, but in this we have to wait – patiently.
I tell you where the difference is. 60 bucks.
- Which most people already spent. Whoo hoo. Remember, they had to close the doors on sales to prevent the influx, they’re not begging for yours or anyonelses buisness here.
As to your Xfire stats, all servers in game were full or high in US last night, I had to wait for past peek times to do a transfer. The problem with listing people ‘leaving in droves’ is that you’re comparing release time, in which is well known for people just binging on a game, vs normal population, which has not even stablized yet.
And the release was far from premature. Several stress tests, several redevelopments. This game is in working order. Yes, it’s riddeled with bugs, but most of these bugs did not show up until release, and most of these ‘imbalances’ were not here during the beta weekends (Thief and Mesmer were both complained as weaker classes.)
What boils down to it is this: You have an opinion, that sPvP isn’t fun for you. That’s fine. There’s plenty of bugs in the game to fix, you can do something else in the meantime.
But I can and WILL debate semantics with you, when you abuse it to try to make your opinion sound like fact. Period. Using Hyperbole for feedback is terrible practice.
MMORPGs are a perpetual work in progress, give respect for the work that’s been done. There are things you just cannot discover until there are a million + people playing your game.
Come back to me when you’ve read up on the history of FFXIV’s beta and release and we’ll discuss your use of the term ‘broken product’.
Also, disagreeing with class balance and the sparse client function of sPvP does not make the product ‘broken’. It functions better then most MMO’s historically at launch and a hell of a lot better than recent online titles. (How’s that Diablo III pvp btw?)
The point is, you’re wrong both in your point and in your attempt to justify your opinion, and you’re more than welcome to quit the game and leave until it suits you, like the rest of the people whom agree with you.
Otherwise, be patient. This game was in development for five years and the anxiousness was to the boiling point, and the demand at the release was already more than they could handle even with several stress test.
This game has already accomplished more at launch design wise than many in a ten year span. You can play other parts of the game, or even other games, while you wait.