Guild Wars 2

I’m not that much into popular builds, but I believe that the point of the phantasm build is to deal as much direct damage, as quickly as possible. So survival of your phantasms is not really a priority, as much as damage. I would remove 10 or 15 points from Inspiration and add them to Dueling instead.

Habib Loew.6239:

No more insta-build walls & gates
Destroyed walls and gates will now rebuild when they reach 10% health rather than on the very first repair. This means that when attackers down a wall or gate defenders won’t be able to instantly rebuild it. Walls and gates which are destroyed can still be damaged if they have any health.

I’m a little sad bout this change. Splitting attackers up by locking a few of them inside the keep, is a great tactic when you are outnumbered as a defender. The other changes are great.

1. The Mesmer is one of those professions that you have to shape into greatness. But once you do, it will be that much sweeter to play. At around level 30-40 you should start feeling a change, due to both your traits and your experience with playing the profession.

2. Clones are there to confuse your foes, and for shatter footer. Phantasms are the damage dealers. Clones can do a significant amount of damage with the staff, though, thanks to condition stacking.

3. Most use Ether Feast, because it has the highest amount of healing. Mirror can be great in WvW, because there’s a ton of ranged damage there. Mantra of Resolve is only really valuable in a mantra focused build.

4. Nope. This is where the Mesmer shines, if you get bored of using the same skills easily. The Mesmer can use many different weapon/healing/utility/elite skills for different situations, depended on if you are playing alone, with allies around you, if you’re defending a keep in WvW, or just running with a zerg. Except for my weapons, I change my skills around constantly. If I’d have to mention one skill, though, it would be Decoy.

5. I would suggest playing a Guardian if you want to focus mostly on boons. The Mesmer can deal out a great amount boons, but it’s all really random, which makes it a bit pointless. It is possible, though. I would probably go with; staff, scepter/torch, Decoy, Arcane Thievery, Signet of Inspiration.

I hope they add a condition generator to the first skill (a 2 sec weakness would be awesome!), other then that it’s fine. I love the condition skill, and a block with a ranged blind is a nice skill to have when you have condition stacked, or are running away from a foe.

For weapons you defiantly want staff and focus. Staff gives out boons with both Chaos Storm and Winds of Chaos, while focus can give swiftness, pull foes away from allies, and stop projectiles. These two weapons are the bread and butter of Mesmer support.

For utilities you basically just want to be using Glamour skills. Illusion of Life and Signet of Inspiration aren’t really suited for WvW. For your elite skill you only really have Time Warp, as Mass Invisibility is useless in a zerg, now that it only affects five allies. It can still be great when running with a small group, though.

The Mesmer is really not that strong when it comes to support trough traits. You have things like “heal allies when you cast a mantra” and improved duration to Glamour skills, but that’s pretty much it.

A lone player running around in low level areas in PvE, will say the game is dying. While a player who’s playing Worlds PvP with his guild, will argue that there are plenty of players around. Basically, it depends on what server you are playing on, what guild you are in, and what content you are playing.

A Snow Griffon.

Or alternatively, a Dolyak dressed as a reindeer, with a red clown nose on.

Grinding is entirely up to you. Some things in the game require it, but it is all optional.
It is perfectly possible to make money without farming at all.
A legendary is suppose to take a lot of time to achieve, not one month.
The people who work on new content, are not the same people who work on bugs.
I’m not sure what future expansions has got to do with this topic, though. Game economy and material gathering will/should stay the same regardless of a new expansion.

Most of these downstate complains bares down to not being able to kill people off, but that’s exactly the point of the downstate. It adds excitement to the game. You just have to consider the downstate as part of the game, and learn, not only how to down a player, but also how to defeat a player. Always remember; a player is not dead, until he is defeated. If you down a player, he is only 75% dead.

My advice is to make a revive based build, and turn the downstate into a gain for your team.

This is something ArenaNet needs to fix. Make two supply crates; one for upgrades, and another that players can take. And then make the game split up the incoming supply in both. It takes an unrealistic amount of communication to coordinate who can or can’t take supplies from a keep.

LHound.8964:

Well, the way this is going of tracks is quite ridiculous.

We can see in this thread a lot of feedback about the Mesmer. I’ll try to sum some of the arguments:

Dumb Arguments:
- Mesmer got portals, enough said;
- Warriors are worse, shut up;
- The 4 or 5 “minions” Mesmers summon are OP;
- They are needed a lot, they must be good;
- They have Stealths and Portals. Balance done;

Real Arguments:
- Mesmer can be traited with Confusion builds to make them kill themselves;
- Knowing how to play is a key to the Mesmer performance;

While the purpose of this topic was to discuss the Mesmer role in Warfare, some players tend to make it a Mesmer class suck/don’t suck thread. Mesmer is not a bad class at all. Mesmer can be quite powerful if well played/traited.

Mesmer is very powerful in small fights/guerrilla warfare. But the sad truth is that Mesmer is an zerg-ophobic class. In a zerg, only the glamour utilities (some of them – Portal, Feedback, Null Field) have slight chances of doing something good. However, Glamour skills are support skills. Enemies will not stop from moving towards you nor run, because of used any of them. Phantasms and clones are useless because they are quickly destroyed. To shatter them is hard because they have to run to them, so no shatter builds also. Boons defensive builds are hard to accomplish due to the randomness of the boons Mesmer can set. So condition is the only viable option and truth be told with serious limitations.

Also, with the weapons limitations, only Focus, Staff and Greatsword can do AoE’s. GS Mesmer being nerfed, Staff Mesmer being randomly supportive and with focus being also a support weapon (with the added “Pull you off the walls to feed you to the angry mob”), the Mesmer lacks something.

My conclusion stands. Mesmer is only good at WvW due to the fact that he has the Portal Skill and TimeWarp. But, let’s put it on other way: “What do you do with your Mesmer in WvW if Portal and TimeWarp were removed from the game?”

Your post is ridiculous.

Glamour skills only have a slight chance of doing something good? What the hell are you talking about? They work every time. The only time I really see foes run away on top of a wall, is when they are surrounded by purple. Yesterday I was fighting against a zerg past the first wall in SM, and every time me and other Mesmer placed down Feedback or Chaos Storm, you could obviously see the foes moving backwards. Everyone ells was just moving forward next to us. Confusion and fear is the Mesmers best weapon. And who makes a boon build with the Mesmer in the first place? That’s just plain bad. Support is more then handing boons out. Conditions are an option, you can stat for direct damage just as well as any other profession. Greatsword, swords, and pistol are all meant for direct damage builds.

The only problem here is that people think the Mesmer is suddenly useless, just because you can’t hit players on top of a wall with your illusions. It only speaks to how lazy a player you are. Stop following the herd, and find something useful to do.

Bones.5762:

Ok i bolded out the parts that i saw an issue with. not very many wants to man siege because you’re the focus of target as well as it’s boring. second one you can’t attempt this during a siege, only after your defending your keep in which case you fail, and if the enemy group is smart and good they will sweep you out, unless you have a couple of thieves with you to perma stealth you. Portal bombing a camp is viable yes, but its not really a siege, its just a mass slaughter because you don’t place down siege except for the enemy team who defending might place down AC and balistas in which case you would counter with siege as well, but in most case you can just run through camps no siege. last one, you don’t get anything for supporting your team, such as a good aoe skill like chaos storm, theyre great supportive skills but to be honest theres a lot of better support classes than a mesmer.

How is manning a siege weapon more boring the hitting a door with your weapon skills? It might be that you become a target , but if you are on any server worth playing on, you will have 5-10 allies standing around you until the wall/door is down. And if you use a cata, instead of a ram, you don’t even have to worry about anything.

You can still use portal during a siege. When you have to pass two walls, there are times when foes will build up the first wall again, to lock you inside. Most teams don’t sweep for Mesmers, but just run around attacking one place to the next. And those that do sweep, generally do it really badly.

A camp becomes a siege if there are players guarding it. And in those cases, portal bombing is a great tool. If you can get the jump on your foes unexpectedly, you can often kill one or two players before the rest even have time to react. Between Decoy, Veil, The Prestige, and Mass Invisibility, you have at least 14 seconds of stealth.

What do you mean by “don’t get anything”? If your whole group is dead because you were all just standing around hitting a door, then no, you aren’t going to get anything. Support is not a competition. The more that takes time to support, the better your team is going to do. And the Mesmer is one of the better support professions in Worlds PvP, as our support skills are very offensive. Meaning we both can defend our allies, and damage our foes, with just one skill.

1. Been playing since the first beta, and started following the game from before the first profession was revealed
2. 319 hours
3. About 20 gold I believe
4. I have one level 80 character
5. I don’t spend time on income, I just play the game
6. Never used it
7. Nope
8. I believe I got two from the last Lost Shore event
9. I have no idea
10. None
11. None
12. I have crafted leatherworker to about 300, and huntsman to about 400. I don’t really care to level it anymore though
13. I sell everything, except for what I need for leatherworker and huntsman stuff
14. That’s a pretty static way of judging a games value. I judge games by their entertainment value, and Guild Wars 2 scores very high in that regard
15. Communication (from ArenaNet, although they are getting better at it)

Where exactly is the appeal in standing around and knocking on a door for 15 min? Someone still needs to man the siege weapons, you need to get supplies to get the siege weapons build, you can hide in a keep and use portal to get your teammates inside, you can portal bomb a camp, you can pretty much solo 1v3 as a Mesmer and live to tell the tale, you have a 10 second AoE quickness skill, you have AoE swiftness on the focus, you can pull people down from walls, you can use Chaos Storm, Feedback, and Null Field to support you team at the door, and so on. The Mesmer is hands down one of the best professions in Worlds PvP.

I really like the cabalist coat. If you look closely you can see two small bottles, a green and a blue, which are the same as the transformation tonics from halloween, that turns you into a ghost or skeleton. The patterns on the coat is also great. But the main thing I like about it is the skeleton head, so I decided to give my charr a dungeon crawler/ghost killer look, by using skeleton heads and a bit of “ghost blue” colors.

cafard.8953:

Ryuujin.8236:

The portals cooldown is too long and duration to short to do it in PvE; again as usual they handle our PvP OPness by slamming PvE with a sledgehammer. -_-

Indeed. The 60s->90s increase in cooldown did nothing to address the portal bombing (which is a rendering engine problem in the first place rather than a balance issue but…), but it dramatically affected all the casual uses of the skill.

It does change the speed of which you can get people inside a keep in Worlds PvP. 30 seconds can mean the difference between being run over, while you are hitting a keep door, or making it trough the door to the keep lord. I don’t think it was an attempt to try and push players away from using it.

Langley.9205:

OK, Kasama, but i don’t really judge proffesions based on 20-30 lvls. It’s just my personal experience so far and if you would read my post till the end you would notice me asking if it evens out somehow later on(higher lvls).

I have this game for a week or smth like that so i’m in no point of judging anything yet, since i don’t have full picture. I just wanted to ask if balance diffrences are so vast on 80 as on low lvls.

I wasn’t trying to write in a harsh tone, if that was your impression.

As deltanium says; clones deal damage trough conditions. This is the reason why staff is the best clone weapon. Clones with a staff deals both condition damage to the enemy, and also gives themselves boons at the same time, with Winds of Chaos. Further more, the staff also has Chaos Storm that (if placed correctly) can give even more conditions to your foe and boons to your clones, at the same time. Between Winds of Chaos and Chaos Storm, your foe will end up with burning, bleeding, vulnerability, poison, weakness, and/or chilled. While your clones can get might, fury, retaliation, and aegis. And, on top of all this, you can also add confusion on your foe, so your foe also will deal damage to himself while he’s beating on your clones.

I’ve done that before in Worlds PvP. I was attacked by three players (on my own), and was running all over the place to avoid them, while making clones of curse. So eventually I ran up top of a small hill, and made one portal, then ran a few meters away down the hill, and placed the other. Then teleported back and forth three times, while watching two of them run from one portal to the other, trying to chase me down. The third player was smart enough to wait at the start portal for me, though, but he reacted way to slow and couldn’t deal enough damage to stop me form teleporting. After the third portal switch, I could see that they had given up, so I teleported back to the first portal, and just looked at them standing there for a bit. Then we went our separate way. It was a really great moment, as I totally changed the output of the battle from being the underdog, to confusing my foes enough that they gave up on fighting me. Fun stuff =)

Portal doesn’t lasts long enough for you to just wait around until a foe comes close to you. though. Opposite to what the video shows, it’s much more of a reactive skill. Another example is to place it down while running away from a zerg, then after you’ve ran for a little while, place down the exit and teleport back. Now you’ve lost at least 50% of the zerg chasing you.

It’s not necessarily the ease of which you do things that makes a profession overpowered, but how efficiently you do it. The only real difference between the different professions is survivability. Heavy armors survive by having high armor stats, and professions like the Mesmer and Thief survives by being evasive. The thing just is, that mobs are much harder to deceive then to humans, as their behavior have to be coded, while a human just acts naturally to what he/she sees. So surviving with a Mesmer becomes noticeably harder in PvE. But it’s worth mentioning that mobs change tactics the higher level you get, and start to dodge roll out of your attacks, as well as using control conditions like daze, stun, or even confusion. Dungeons also demands that you spend more time playing a support role, which is something that solo play will not give a good insight in either. The game is also not only balanced according to PvE, but PvP as well. So overall it’s not really fair to judge a profession based only on playing 20-30 levels in PvE, without trying anything ells. It’s a nice way to get a good insight into how each profession plays, though.

The reason why it’s done this way is to allow for diversity. Some players like playing difficult professions, other like play easy professions. However, the difficulty of a professions scales a lot depending on how you build it, and what content you are playing. And player skill also plays a big factor in Guild Wars 2, especially in PvP.

Well, that made my day.

That awkward moment when you rally, and start reviving your own clone…

I have a level 80 Ranger that I leveled up in PvE, and a level 28 Mesmer that I’m currently leveling up in Worlds PvP. I only play PvE with my Ranger, and only PvP with my Mesmer. Don’t see why you only need to choose one profession.

Staff is primarily a condition damage weapon, so it makes sense to go for condition damage with it. It does however deal a bit of direct damage as well, but if you want to go for direct damage, you are better of with a weapon like the greatsword as a primary weapon.

Some really great drawings in this thread Fsnowzombie. You have a really cool style. Here’s some more inspiration for you =)

Edit: The charr is a Mesmer btw

Nothing, I love the spear. 1 has an evade like the greatsword, 2 reflects projectiles, 3 I use mostly as a travel skill, just like Swoop on the greatsword, 4 is a counter and a ranged attack, and 5 deals insane AoE damage. It’s great.

If you do this, then here’s an idea for ya: Have everyone in the guild make a new Mesmer, and then make your characters look exactly the same.

Games become eSports because they are supported by a large community. Adding new features in the next patch does not change the fact that Guild Wars 2 could still fail to become a successful eSport.

Dogs work to get rewards, humans (should) work to achieve things they personally think has some form of value, either to themselves or to others. The thought process that’s applied to a game, is vastly different from the problems in the “real world”. Although it is possible to draw parallels to some things. The way we act in a game is often a result of bottled up feelings, that comes from what we experience in our lives. Or a means to act out in a way that we normally aren’t allowed to. In many ways, games are a great psychological tool that can either help us get rid of unwanted emotions, or seek emotions that makes us feel good. But who we are on the internet, or in a game, is never a direct opposite to whom we are in the real world, unless we act apart of curse. It’s just that the lines of who we really are, and who we want others to think we are, becomes blurred on the internet. Because there’re no real consequences to the way we act online, we feel more inclined to act out on our inner emotions. But those emotions are still part of who we are.

Iruwen.3164:

Kasama.8941:

Mesmer is my favorite profession to play in PvP, because it’s so much fun to watch your opponents run around either attacking clones, or damaging themselves with confusion on them.

You’re actually playing competitive PvP relying on that? I guess you meant “trololo I’m a lvl1 guy testing the game” WvW enemies…

Is there a point to this comment, or are you just trying to be offensive?

Mesmer is my favorite profession to play in PvP, because it’s so much fun to watch your opponents run around either attacking clones, or damaging themselves with confusion on them. It’s also a ton of fun to hide inside keeps in Worlds PvP, and then use portal to sneak your allies inside and kill the lord. But for these same reasons, I don’t like to play Mesmer at all in PvE. It’s just not the same to trick bots, as it is to trick other players. So in PvE I play my Ranger, which is the best PvE profession in my opinion.

Surbrus.6942:

I am very much against the whole “pretend to be a clone” tactic. In small scale fights, especially 1v1’s, it is easy to tell the clones from the real Mesmer for a good player. This discussion isn’t about how to defend yourself against bad thieves (the ones that will fall for clones), it is the ones that will know that clones attack slow and don’t have an off hand weapon.

That is not to say that clones are still not useful, they can still take hits (position yourself with clones between you and your target, less useful against melee opponents). When they are going into their Heartseeker combo (hs-hs-hs-hs-hs, ad infinitum), if you invis then they will jump onto a nearby clone.

The whole “pretend to be a clone” strategy works wonders against people new to the game, will protect you against bad players, will add more targets to sift through in larger scale combat.. but in small scale combat you should never assume that anyone will fall for the clones… use them to intercept ranged attacks, and for damage.

I only speak from experience. It might be that it’s easy to recognize the Mesmer from the clone when he is dodging and running around all over the place, but that is simply just a sure sign that you’re playing against a bad “clone player”. I’ve played against plenty of good Thieves, but they don’t kill me 1v1.

What usually happens is the Thief tries to burst me down (always with daggers), but only get me down to around 30% health before I get distance to him. At this point I already have a clone in play, but the Thief is still able to follow my movement, so I use this time to dodge and move round until all three clones are up. Then I change position, using tactics like teleporting behind the Thief while he’s facing me, or using decoy and roll behind him or to the side. I can also get the Thief to move around, by using AoE attacks like Chaos Storm or Feedback. During all of this I only use my 1 skill while the Thief is facing me, and then use other skills while I’m behind him or he’s busy attacking a clone. I only move if I can see he’s spotted me. All of this then goes back and forth; the Thief will get me down to around 30% health, and then will lose sight of me for long enough that I can heal back up.

If the Thief is at my level, I can also get him down to 30% health, at which point the Thief usually goes into stealth and runs away to heal. Some give up at this point, others come back and try again, at which point the above just happens all over again. A few die because they are too busy chasing me/clones, to keep track of their health (which is the whole idea of my clone build). If the Thief is much higher level then me, he might get me down to 10-20% health instead of 30%, before I can get distance to him. Most of the time when fighting higher level players, I will run away if he kills my clones too fast, but sometimes the high level Thief will run away from me, because they either get bored, or intimidated, by the never ending clones.

Mjk.7562:

There are situations when you cannot costantly sweep area around you with your keen eyes, like when you are battling someone. That’s exactly when i usualy go down vs thief, i start dueling a person, poof – bad luck, insta gibed by roaming thief.

But then we aren’t talking about 1v1. During fights I use my ‘look behind’ key a lot, though, and I also move around my target all the time, so I don’t stand with my back to one area for too long. However, the example you mention can be said about all professions really, the Thief is just better at sneaking and bursting, so you notice the impact that is has more.

This is exactly what i was writing about in earlier post. While i thank you for the advice and the OP probably also, the source of the problem is before you press the button binded to blink (even you already have finger on it) you drop dead :P Tho of course i agree than more vit/toughtness might help you in certain cases. But i tell you this, last time i had mesmer in WvW and not my thief, i got 9k hit by steal, 6k preloaded cnd, i reacted by pressing decoy and immediately dodge, … i had like 2k hp left after cnd, i got stealth animation and never got dodge as following backstab for 15!!!!!k finished me, bit of overkill tho.

This is where the problem is, the thief’s burst aplied in 1-1.5 second, fater when hasted. There is plainly no time to reac to the burst. All what can help is .. observe observe and observe, never let thief to get jump on you and preferably travel with friends:D

You should never take your eyes of the battlefield, and never stay in corners or hilled areas for too long. When you run around, always try to run at the highest place possible. This will make you able to see for longer distances, so you can see the Thief coming from a long way away. Also always use your left mouse button to look around when you are running. If you don’t use it, you get tunnel vision and become very easy to sneak up on from both the side and the back.

The times a Thief has bursted me down in Worlds PvP, I can count on one hand. And it has never been in 1v1 fights. My Mesmer is currently level 26 with 135 kills.

Mjk.7562:

I have decided to correct ppl constantly spreading false informations about thieves. Thief can use sword = aoe, true hp on lvl 80 berserker thief is slightly under 12k. My thief is not full glass cannon 10/30/30/0/0 and is VERY far from squishy, it is all about l2p issue with thieves and their survevability. I am not sure how much you know about thieves but i play both and my thief aoe>>> mesmer aoe, just pure cluster arrow spamming with or without haste , or combo poison aoe arrow with cluster arrow for nice aoe weakness. Also thief’s shortbow’s default attack is bouncing between targets which could be considered as aoe.

Btw cluster arrow can crit 6k for me, but i am far from dmg cap of other thieves who reported 8+k cluster arrow dmg. Not bad when you can shoot like 3 in few sec with haste .

Hope this cleared few things.

We are talking about Worlds PvP here, not sPvP. It’s a totally different game. There are a ton of bad players on Worlds PvP, compared to sPvP, because when you stick to zergs you never really learn to fight 1v1.

djmckie.4876:

Kasama.8941:

Get some toughness, that’s the first thing to do. The Thief’s damage is pretty much always direct damage, and your health pool as a Mesmer is low.

Mesmers Have a pretty high health pool don’t they? The fact Mesmer have High health is the reason not to go vitality, but you are right, toughness is a must if your worried about thieves getting the jump on you.

I find it really funny that every class has to trait to counter the thief :P

Yes I meant high, corrected it.

The Mesmer actually has a medium base health pool. Elementalist, Guardian, and Thief has 10k base health. Mesmer, Ranger, and Engineer has 15k base health. And Warrior and Necromancer has 18k base health.

The Thief is balanced out by being squishy and not having any real AoE attacks. So if the Thief wasn’t great at 1v1, it really wouldn’t be good at anything.

Decoy and Blink I always have on me. They work great both individually, and as a combo. For my third utility slot I switch between Portal, Feedback, Mantra of Resolve, and Signet of Domination in Worlds PvP. Portal and Feedback speaks for themselves, the mantra can be a life saver when running away from zergs (it removes immobilize), the signet I use for the stun effect after I’ve pulled enemies down from walls.

Honorable mentions; Arcane Thievery. It has a permanent spot on my third utility slot in sPvP.

Get some toughness, that’s the first thing to do. The Thief’s damage is pretty much always direct damage, and your health pool as a Mesmer is high, so it’s not really worth getting vitality at early levels. Even just going 10 into the Chaos trait line will give you “gain 10 seconds regeneration at 75% health” and “3% reduced damage for each illusion you have up”. Condition damage can easily be taken care of by skills, if it even becomes a problem at all. Condition damage is pretty uncommon in Worlds PvP, mostly because it’s a lot easier to beat down doors with direct damage. But luckily there are other roles in Worlds PvP then banging on doors, like pulling enemies down from walls, scouting for incoming zergs, or running for supplies (portal is great for this).

Anyway, the first thing you want to do when a Thief attacks you, is teleport away. You aren’t going to run out of his damage range, so you need to use Blink, or Phase Retreat on the staff. You can also stun him or pull him away with Into The Void, but using teleportation is much faster. After getting out of the Thief’s initial burst range, you want to start creating clones to throw off his focus on you. Try not to dodge roll around too much, since that will distinguish you from your clones. Instead, you have to be brave and stand still until you can see the Thief going for you. When this happen, you then start to use stealth and teleportation skills like Decoy, Blink, and Portal. But you should only move when the Thief has spotted you. All of this will result in the Thief loosing focus on the fight, which means that you will either kill him because he’s too busy finding you to worry about his health, or see him run away from you because Thieves tend not to have a lot of patience. The Thief is also a burst profession, so if he’s run out of initiative juice, he going to be an easy target for you.

The best advice, though, is to play a Thief and learn the tricks, so you’ll know what to look out for. But generally, Thieves are pretty predictable.

Hope this helps.

I really don’t get why people want Capture The Flag in Guild Wars 2. It would just turn into a control vs. stability/stealth game. You either get stunned and killed, or you have a Guardian/Thief/Mesmer that uses stability/stealth AoE to get past opponents. Of curse, you could remove all abilities from players holding the flag, but certain profession would still have advantages over others, when it comes to things like swiftness and stealth.

There comes a time where you exceed the threshold of what new content can be offered to the player. At this point the developers can go two ways. 1) end the content. Or; 2) create something that extents the time in which the player have to spend playing the content. But even if the developers choose the 2nd option, it is still only you, the player, who can choose to continue beyond that threshold. Meaning; if you don’t want to grind, you should take the fact that you are grinding as a sign of the event being over, for you.

Opsfor.2814:

Which games isn’t about Grinding? name one pls. other than FPS-type.

All single player games.

Thanks for the correction Jonathan. It’s always nice to know what goes on behind the curtain, as it solves a lot of complains on the forums. I just thought of two questions after reading how many you are at balance meetings. How much does player input come into play (pun intended) during the meetings? And can’t too many people in one room make it take too long to reach a final balancing decision?

Also, I really think you could use a communication (note, not a community) manager. Not only for the forum, but also for ingame events, as it can be quite confusing to find out where you need to be at times. And that’s while reading the forums. Players who don’t read this forum, don’t have a clue about what an event is about, or where to go. I’d love to see something like signs in Lions Arch, advertising for an upcoming event. Much like you did with the posters in The Lost Shore event. And maybe players could then click the signs, which would then take them to the website for more information. Or, you could make a separate menu in the hero window, that could then be used to set up event advertising

Metafrank.9017:

Most MMOs confuse having the most time with being the best player. Guild Wars used not to.
Now it does, because while having the best character does not make you the best player (and this is the part you confused there), it does darn well help.

Gear does not make you a good player, it just makes you a better survivor, because it takes longer to kill you. There’s a big difference there. I’ve come up against high end gear players in Worlds PvP plenty of times, and I can easily recognize the bad players from the good, because the bad players never manage to kill me, so the fight ends up lasting until one of us runs away from boredom. While the good players will have a strong skill rotation, and kill me almost faster then I can heal.

Of curse better gear helps, but it’s not like exotic gear is completely impossible to get. It’s just that people think they need six pieces of the same critical damage gear, and the top jewels, and six of the same damage runes that increase your damage further, and sigils that match each other, and so on…or ells their character will suck. Which is just stupid really, because it’s not the game that limits you, it’s yourself. Your expectations of what you need are much higher then what the game requires.

All three are true, the problem is that players confuse being able to participate, with having the option to be the best player. What ArenaNet are saying is that you can play the content without having the best gear, but if you want to be the best Worlds PvP player, or play the hardest difficulty dungeon, you need the best gear. But of curse, people only want the easy solution; being able to play casually, and be the best player at the same time. However, the problem is mostly that a lot of players believe that they need the best gear in order to compete, but that is not true at all. You can compete and make a difference with a few random exotics and some masterwork gear, as long as you don’t expect to perform equally to someone with full exotic gear. Gear is really not important, unless you make it so.

Also, advertising is advertising. There are no fake promises, only what you imagine there to be. Advertising is meant to make you buy the product, that is all. The quality of a product can never be determined by the advertising alone.

I made my charr Mesmer out to look like a dungeon crawler/ghost killer. The colors are to make her look like a Necromancer, just to confuse my opponents in Worlds PvP even more =)

The Ranger also has Lightning Reflexes, Storm Spirit (activated skill), and Man O’ War (spear skill) that deals lightning damage. So Thunderclap is not misplaced, it’s just an uncommon skill effect for the Ranger.

Also, the Ranger has the best PvE downed skills. Period. I’ve lost count on how many times I’ve survived downed encounters against two or three mobs, all thanks to my pet and the interrupt from Thunderclap.

The only downside to the River Drake is that the skill can be easy to dodge. But if you use Entangled and quickness, people die very fast! The Jaguar is equally amazing for direct damage.

NickChabby.8907:

And a 12g worth 20 slot box and an exotic trinket. Just gimme those two and I’ll be more than happy.

I use the 20 slot box myself, so that only gave me 12 more slots. And I can’t even remember what the hell an exotic trinket is. In total, I got around 2 gold for playing for three hours..

No sorry, but don’t feel too bad about it. People on this forum make it sound like everyone who participated in the last event got a precursor. I got two exotics (a spear and some boots), and two rares. And you know what? That’s probably what you would have gotten too. Honestly, if I knew the event would last for three hours straight, I would never have started playing it..

There were a few negative things to say about the Lost Shore event, like people getting dropping from the game, bugged events that prevented progress, tons of lag, delayed events, and an end event that lasted way too long. But I thought I’d make this thread to give credit where credit is due. I’m talking about the design.

The Lost Shore instantly became my favorite looking map as soon as I stepped in. I could almost feel the warm beach sun light, and I love the use of pink and light blue colors, and the hot springs (not to forget the hot spring puzzle). And the karka are even more amazing. Not only are they are great design, but the animations are absolutely fantastic. An egg laying mob that hatches other mobs, which then tries to latch on to you, like the facehuggers from Half-Life (or Alien). Brilliant. And I was even more blown away when I saw a karka suddenly drop down on the side, and try to roll over me! It not only looked good, but it’s also a great way of forcing players to dodge. Giving the drakes confusion as an attack is also a really good idea, as it made me think about whether it was worth attacking or not. The detail on the drakes is really amazing as well, when you look closely. Little things like the yellow line around it’s eyes, the different colored scale, and the blue tongue! They are defiantly my favorite Ranger pet right now.

So yeah, keep up the great work designers! =)

This is what I say all the time to other players myself. But it’s astounding the amount of MMO players who doesn’t know the difference between chore and fun, because they have long forgotten the reason why they started playing games in the first place. The other day I went on a “farm run” with my guild, just to see what it was all about, but half way trough I was too far behind them because I kept getting sidetracked, and because it was stupidly boring. Running around in a circle collecting mats for an hour. Why?! I could have spend that time play Worlds PvP, or anything ells that’s not a chore. People don’t think about what their are doing. But, to each their own..

This topic pops up every other week, so you are defiantly not alone in wanting rifles. I’ve had this debate as well in other threads, with Ranger players who believe that because they have a image of how their Ranger should look like, others should share that same vision. And that bows are somehow natural, while rifles are ascendant from something unnatural. I’ve even made examples of comparing Robert Rogers to Aragon, but people can’t get this idea out of their head, that weapons apparently are a “threat” to nature. Even though rifles are made of all natural materials from metal and wood, to gun powder. Then there are others who argues with us not needing rifles, because apparently a rifle is something we can only get if we need it, while all other weapons can be added to the game for the sake of fun. And all of this despite the fact that they don’t even have to use the kitten rifle! It’s just plain ignorant.