Guild Wars 2

2 manned Mesmer and Engineer haha

Haha well I don’t think it’s possible as a level 1 character. You’ll probably level up just for the exploration bit haha. I did get it on my level 11 necro though

Human Mesmer, no speed boost.

Is your potato powered by a lemon and a couple wires? Cause that’s what mine is like lol.

As far as speculation, I suspect you’re pretty close to what will happen. It’s my theory too, although I bet they have a few more aesthetic events happening that will drive future events. Maybe some time of the Mad King terrorizing the town or something to that nature.

I run a 30/20/0/0/30 build, and run it mostly as a shatter build. I pick up Greatsword/Scepter+Focus or sometimes Greatsword/Staff. I’d say both builds are equally viable depending on your play style. With the scepter+focus, I usually open with warden, drop curtain/void if the target/targets run away, then scepter 3 for damage and confusion stack. I’ll use scepter 2 to either block and incoming attack if I take threat, or to blind my target to give the warden increased up time. By the end of this rotation I usually have 1-2 extra clones. I will run in for a shatter (usually cry of frustration if the enemy has a lot of HP left) then weapon swap. I tend to use the scepter in a short-mid range to minimize delay in clone generation (just far enough to avoid direct damage).

I use the staff if I want a play style with more defensive options and scepter/focus for more offensive and utility options.

I think in the end, it depends on how you like to play.

As a Ferg player and hearing that comment from a Kaineng player, why do I have a feeling I’d be involuntarily eating pumpkins soon? You Kaineng and your siege weapons

Technically that could be considered UTC…which is pretty close to GMT.

Warden is pretty good for AoE…especially if you drop a glamour field on top of him. He will finish the combo with confounding bolts…adds confusion all over the place.

Is Ferg actually in the lead now? Unfortunately I work weekdays and cannot log in to check. I thought we fell behind too far to make it up this quickly. Agreed that blue should be the primary target…not saying we’d cut red too much slack. We need those areas too you know :-P.

I use abyss and to me it’s a very dark black. I like it quite a bit.

Congratulations on how much you’ve progressed Kaineng. I am on Fergs and between FC, DR, and Kaineng, we’ve all danced around the lowest tier together, but I feel we’ve always had a good relationship between our servers in the past.

I have always had great respect for your server, because, even when chips are down, you guys never seem to give up. That’s a great quality. I am happy for you guys and look forward to seeing you progress, of course, hopefully in the future it’s not at the expense of my server.

Perspective is a funny thing though. I do agree with my fellow Fergusson’s Crossingonians that we have noticed a significant change in the dynamics of our bouts with Kaineng. Even in primetime, your numbers seem to equally match ours (not all the time, but more so than before). This week I have spent most of my time in the eternal borderlands and I can say that after last weekend, it has been a struggle for us to keep up. Probably in peak US hours, we do have a bit of an advantage, but from my perspective, Kaineng is far from being outmanned these days. This is not a bad thing. Fubuki and the rest of Kaineng WvW’ers have worked hard promoting their server and increasing their ranks.

The biggest change has been the overnight and early morning strength that Kaineng has developed. This is a very large factor of the turnaround we have seen. From my perspective, Fergs is a server with mostly US primetime coverage (on weeknights, weekends are a little different). I do not think Fubuki’s comment about Ferg “nightcapping” tells the whole story. The way I see it, back in those days we had a huge population advantage. We would own majority of the map when all servers went to bed, and it stayed that way through the night and day (we did not have a strong middle of night presence, just a powerful primetime that never turned over because no servers had overnight coverage). This changed with the recent additions to Kaineng. Again though, it’s not a bad thing. Kaineng has moved itself to the top of the tier in their own right, regardless of how it happened.

I think we all need to take a step back and look at everything from the perspective of the other side. Kaineng has accomplished something great here and should be commended for it. However, there are many variables that do contribute to the outcome of the scoreboard and without specific data, we cannot accurately make sound assumptions on any of it.

Seriously? I can’t wait to check my achievements and see where I am at on this haha.

Yeah, I am waiting to complete my 100% until after it’s fixed as to not put my mesmer at a disadvantage.

Someone from ANET has confirmed this is a bug and it has been logged it in their database.

You can find the post in this thread.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Mesmer-Clones-not-proper-copies/first#post398781

1. A Phantasm is an illusion. Illusion covers both Phantasms and Clones
- Illusion = Both Phantasms/Clones
-Phantasm = Phantasm Only (the ghostly looking illusions that deal damage)
-Clones = Clones Only (the illusions that look pretty much identical to you. At low levels they do 0 dmg)

2. I believe all races except maybe the Charr have this animation. I know 100% that human does.

3. Survivability for mesmer in PvE is pretty high, although it depends on your weapons. The first 40 levels or so are a bit of a grind because a mesmer doesn’t gain their full power until traited. You shouldn’t have too much trouble surviving, just your fights will take somewhat longer than other clases.

This is all just based on my personal experience.

Isn’t the “Anomaly” more of a mesmeresque focus? I believe it is a purple orb that you hold in your off hand. The sigil is the same as the other “Illusionary” weapons.

I believe that it does, however, the illusion HP base is already so low you may not notice a significant difference in survivability.

If my understanding is correct, the illusions do inherit your base stats (through gear/traits).

@ Carighan I disagree.

I personally started using Focus/Warden long after hitting level 80, and I feel that, when used correctly, the Warden is a very effective phantasm. It does take some time to get used to and the Warden is not a phantasm that you can cast and forget. It requires more strategy than the other phantasms.

Your enemy runs away? Great, temporal curtain then void…this pulls them right back into your Warden’s attack and cripples them, preventing them from running away too fast.

Your enemy wants to DPS the Warden? Same concept as any other phantasm. They die quickly and usually I only use them for 1-2 attacks then shatter, depending on the situation. If you want more DPS from your phantasm, then protect them. For me, I’ve traited my glamour skills for blind/confusion and I use scepter. They way my utility is set up, thats 3 potential stacks of blind. If you use a staff, drop a chaos storm on him. This is no different than fighting someone who is trying to DPS a Berserker.

I have found the Warden useful for all types of fights. Bosses, PvE, dungeons, WvW, and SPVP. For a real treat, drop the Warden on a zerg in PvP in the midst of chaos. Most zergs are so focused on attacking walls that there is a delay in their reaction when they realize their taking damage from something right next to them rather than from a distance away.

Noooo! Not our precious secret stash of mushrooms…Quick! let’s rally a zerg to drive out this illusive Kaineng mushroom stealer!

Only tricky part, how would shatters work if the Warden was GT? Shatter on spot? Cause it wouldn’t have a designated target to run to.

It has definitely been a fun match up. I feel like FC’s population is much lower now than it was before…maybe a bunch of people jumped ship last week after the beating from Darkhaven. I have not seen any commanders and I feel like we have become very disorganized in the last two weeks. We still have a population advantage to Kaineng and Devona, but that’s the only thing I feel like is holding us together.

Anyone else on Fergie feel like our numbers are dwindling fast?

One thing I would love to see, would be for the warden to re-position between attacks. Right now, most enemies (except PvE mobs) will run out of the Warden’s attack range when they’re being hit. This gives me a great opportunity to shatter the Warden as he’s useless when out of range of a fight.

It would be interesting to see a tweak to Warden that would allow him to follow the enemy to melee range between attacks, but remain stationary when he starts his whirl. Right now, he only moves when an enemy runs out of around 1200 range or so.

But I do agree with Gaiawolf that the current mechanic is fine the way it is. The focus/warden definitely has a big learning curve, but once you learn timing, positioning, and learn how to place temporal curtain for void pull to drag enemies into the warden’s circle…the more you’ll love the focus.

I believe that last achievement is for the Halloween event that is rolling out on Oct 22.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen this happen. Do you use Deceptive Evasion (clone create on dodge)? Sometimes, the clone you create targets a different enemy than the one you have targeted (seems to attack the closest enemy, not target). So if you kill your target, they will still be attacking their initial target (different from yours).

This could be what’s causing the anomaly you describe.

To add to Easymode’s post. I think a factor was that, due to the speed staff users could chain Chaos Armor through the leap finishers, there was almost no need to ever use Staff+4. When I used to run with staff, I would rarely use Staff+4 because of how easy/cost-friendly it was to get chaos armor through combo fields.

I think there’s also a lot of events that are very hard to find, which makes me think there are many out there that most players have not seen.

For example, the other day I was running around in Shaemoor village (human starting area). I ran into the graveyard and found a priest of Grenth that was talking about a sensing a spirit at night or something along those lines. So I came back to the graveyard at night time, and randomly found an NPC “Lady in White”. After talking to her, it kicked off an event that I have never seen before (there were no icons or anything that would indicate she was part of an event). She asked me to escort her home. When we reached the edge of the graveyard, she freaked out and turned into a ghost/mini boss.

It was a pretty cool experience. Makes me wonder how many other events can be found off the beaten trail.

The Karma sets from the human God temples in Orr have similar looking armor sets for light female. Definitely not the same, and not quite as nice, but they might be a decent alternative for those of you going for that type of look. The wiki page has some pics towards the bottom.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Armageddon_armor_of_Balthazar

If it is the face melting illusions that are giving you trouble, I recommend DPS’ing them down quickly. The HP for those illusions (called phantasms) are very low, and only 2-3 hits should take them down. Then I would recommend putting pressure on the mesmer (there are several other threads that focus on how to recognize the correct mesmer through the clones).

Also, try to recognize the different types of phantasms. They all react differently. For example, the warden is the phantasm with dual wield axes. That phantasm is rooted in place but will do insane amounts of AoE damage. Best strat is to roll away. He will not follow. Another phantasm is the berserker. This one will follow and do a spin attack which will cripple you. DPS this one down quick (HP for this phantasm is very low).

@Eurosdown

Could you clarify? My Warden has never been able to ignore LoS. It fails to “Obstruction” quite a bit.

I think you can create custom channels right now. In your chat window, there should be a button to add chat tabs. You could add one to just show the type of chat you want to see while you are farming (e.g. whispers, says, guild chat, etc).

From some basic testing, I know condition damage increases damage from sharper images bleeds.

Nah, it’s just a risen priest boss. But he is terrifying none-the-less. I can’t tell you how many times getting “fear” forced my character to run right into an AoE field. Also, his fireball attack owns. Got double hit for 11k dmg per hit (immediately back to back).

I think you can preview a lot of the sets using the lockers in the heart of the mists. Even for items you don’t have, you can still right click + preview.

Tom Gore.4035:

The only thing I wonder is how the heck people living in some of the upper structures of Lion’s Arch come and go about their house?

Because I’ve been jumping all around LA and I can positively say some of those houses are 100% unreachable without an airship.

Maybe those are reserved for Tengu residents? Perhaps they can fly up there? :-P

The changes from this patch had no effect on my build, however I agree with the OP that a “state of the mesmer” post from a dev would be encouraging. There are a lot of changes with the mesmer and there are a lot of proven bugs with traits and skills that are still active in the current build of the game.

It would be very nice to at least hear from a dev about the vision and design of the mesmer regarding recent changes.

The focus used to be my least favorite offhand. I always gravitated towards pistol. At lvl 80 I picked up the focus again for fun. Now I can’t put it down. The utility with it is amazing. The temporal curtain + into the void for speed boosts and positioning, combined with the nice damage output from the warden.

For me, the warden needs some assistance with set up, but once he gets going, the damage is nice. I have my glamour skills traited to blind and inflict confusion. To set up the warden, I usually drop a glamour field/bubble over him or use scepter 2 to blind. This give my warden enough time to set up.

Actually Warden cannot spawn without LoS. Berserker is the only one that does not require LoS to my knowledge.

I did not know about the target thing…that’s cool. I will have to test it. I assume the target has to be an enemy (and can’t be an ally?). It would be pretty awesome if you could target and ally and move yourself back on your side of the enemy lines haha.

I run a 20/20/0/0/30. For the domination 20 though, I chose Confusing Enchantments over the Greatsword Training. I found this to be more useful in WvW.

I still use a greatsword for long ranged direct damage and short range burst/clone generation/berserker cripple. I’m no glass cannon, but I still do a lot of damage (works nice in PvE as well).

I’ve tried GS + Staff and GS + Scepter/Focus in WvW. It depends what you like. For me, I like Scepter/Focus better. Warden is amazing against zergs in WvW (even without phantasmal haste, which I’ve never used).

Staff is very useful too though, as it has great defense and is very balanced. So it really just depends on which style of play you like better.

I believe the sugar pumpkins are a normal crafting ingredient you can find. I forget which zone, but here is an area with trolls that has an entire patch of them.

I ran into the same dilemma. After testing it out some, I felt the added power in domination (with the great sword trait) seemed to work better than the added toughness. With the staff, most of your survivability seems to come from your skills anyways.

To add to the other comments…don’t forget to factor in that warden is AoE damage.

Haha so true, my favorite is dropping bubble, warden, and zerker and watching all the white numbers and purple swirls flying up all over the place.

Also, against zerg-like groups, I find scepter 3 is a certain kill. 5 stacks of confusion (in addition to the raw damage from it) basically shuts down that player completely. Any attempts to attack or use any survival skills simply backfires. Top that with your own/your team’s DPS, and yeah, certain death.

Stiv.1820:

This is like asking “what is that class that makes copies of itself over and over, then when you down them, they go invisible and make more copies then get back up? Exploit?”

No it’s the entire point of the profession!

It was a Thief with P/D build. The entire build is about slow condition damage and being in stealth as much as possible. You are just exaggerating how short they were out of stealth after attacking. To counter this, put pets on passive and attack from range, don’t let him get near you. Though with a catapult sitting there.. he can stealth by attacking that so.. just that situation.

I think what the OP and I were saying is that we are just looking for more information on if there is a build/profession that is capable of this. If so, then fine. Not going to argue with it, cause so far I have not found it to be overpowering. In fact, I have no problem with thieves at all in their current state.

What I was describing was something different I was witnessing last night. No, I am not exaggerating the timing on this. Again, it could very well just be the player rendering delay that caused him to only appear for less than a second. It just seemed to be inconsistent from what I have witnessed from many thief builds so far (not positive it was even a thief, cause I did not get to see him much).

I was not clear in how I presented my previous post (and I probably poorly represented my stance by even mentioning hacking/exploiting), but I am not calling anyone out for hacking or exploiting. I’m just trying to ask if the scenario I described is possible with the current game mechanics. If it is, great, question answered.

Your post and the 3 posts prior to yours had some very constructive feedback that could account for much of this and it also explains why, even though he was constantly invisible, he wasn’t hitting very hard (likely sacrificing a lot for this capability). As you said, he probably was proc’ing his stealth from the catapult. Just seemed a little quick to stealth and long durations is all.

If this was on Fergusson’s crossing against a Kaineng Charr at the Red tower, I was there too. Not sure the class (hard to tell when they’re always invisible). For over a minute 7-8 of us were trying to kill this guy. He would be invis, reappear for < 1 second to hit (he did not hit very hard at all), then disappear for another 5-10 sec. He was trying to take down a catapult we were building, but the invisibility seemed a little off. We even tried AoE, but we were aiming blind and never seemed to hit him much with it.

I’ve faced many thieves who have gotten the best of me at times, but I’ve never seen this before. Pretty much a constant stealth the whole minute, only reappearing for a half second to hit once/twice, then disappearing again.

As a mesmer, we finally beat him after dropping null field. It seemed to pull him out of stealth long enough for us to target/attack.

I don’t know if this was a hack, exploit, or simply game mechanics combined with rendering. It wasn’t too game breaking as it was just 1 guy who didn’t do much damage, but it was definitely frustrating.

I had the same idea as the OP. I threw this build together as a base model.

I made a name for this build a while back. The glamorous zerg buster.

http://www.gw2db.com/skills/calc/mesmer#6|17|2647|8134|4091|4085|8987|20|1751|2299|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|20|2316|2314|0|30|2310|2411|2312|7|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|

I actually run with a variation to this. I sacrifice the points in Inspiration (glamour skill duration increase and cool down reduction) for 20 points in dueling. I found the ability to generate clones on dodge more valuable (especially in one on one fights), but it really depends on your play style. I tend to lean towards balanced builds and stay away from ones that depend on certain scenarios.

The real strength of this build is in WvW. It is amazing to see how often enemy players will attack through confusion in the heat of battle. By the time most of them realize their skills are damaging them, they’re already below half health (all the while taking direct damage from you and anyone else on your team). It really has great synergy with the warden. Drop warden, then feedback bubble. Bubble blinds (which protects the warden) and confuses while warden starts his attack. If they stay in the bubble, they take massive damage from warden. If they leave, they get a 5 sec stack (plus 33%) of confusion. For the mesmer, it’s fire and forget. You can drop a bubble on a cluster and pick off any that move out of range (I use great sword for long range and berserker). It’s fun to throw in zerker for good crippling after you drop the warden. Makes it slower for them to get out of your glamour field.

I chose the name “zerg buster” cause this build seems to do just that. A zerg has it’s strength in numbers. What this build does is it shuts down the attacking power of large chunks of the zerg. When the enemies realize their attacks are killing them, they pull back or cut off their DPS. Your team is continuing to attack. It essentially limits their damage output while yours increases (through confusion, combo fields, and feedback bubbles.

I will admit though, I’m not a big fan of the portal use for the glamour confusion, because it requires running into the zerg for placement. This can get very tricky.

Carrots and onions?

I’m curious about the “Counterable with mesmer” part for the arrow carts and ballista’s in the Lord room. What is the strategy mesmer’s can use? We ran into this last night and I am struggling at beating this defense. If a mesmer can even make it through the hallway, portal won’t work because anyone using it will be mowed down by the siege AoE. Feedback doesn’t work on the siege weapons. Invisibility won’t work cause the AoE is constant so you take damage and die anyways. I can’t figure out if any offensive siege would help as the defensive siege inside the room is out of sight and it’s a very long hallway.

Only way we beat them was outlasting and outnumbering them. Still took us over 30 minutes to take the room.

As stated above, the Mesmer into the void is an AoE ability, and is not reliant on LoS. The only requirement is that your target is close enough to the curtain to be pulled in. This only works on ledges/walls with no lip to block the enemies. Most keeps/towers have this lip, making the pull off walls ineffective. The only time it works then, is if enemy players jump on the lip to attack. If you’re close enough and in range to attack, then I see no problem with a mesmer ripping you off the wall.

The exception would be like the OP’s example where there was no lip in the area he was standing. From my observation, not many walls are set up this way (I find walls with lips far more common).

One thing that happened to Fergusson’s Crossing last night, was the the quaggan’s lightning broke the alter at our garrison. Thus causing the orb to fall on the floor. It reset and respawned at our northern most altar…unprotected. Someone quickly grabbed the orb and moved it to Dreadfall Bay (under our ownership at the time). Not sure if this is related to the OP’s post, but it sounds very similar.

Haha, well to be honest, part of the infinite numbers was us respawning and running back. Some of those fights lasted forever. I think in one fight I died twice and came back while the fighting was still going on. This was even running all the way from our Citadel. It’s true though we had a full queue in our borderlands last night.

Funny thing about our perspective is, it seemed like you guys were multiplying in that room. We would kill some off but you guys still had strong numbers inside (until the end).

It’s very interesting how things change when you’re winning. Just last week we were always outmanned when we got destroyed by NSP. This week, all maps tend to fill up pretty quick.

Holding us off that long in that one hallway caused our server to make a lot of mistakes. We were so focused on trying to get that keep that we let Devona’s take over much of the SW/W side of our map. On top of that, the quaggan’s wrecked our garrison orb altar and we had to move it when it respawned. We had to pull back our efforts to retake everything. It wasn’t until we pushed DR back that we had a chance to retake Shadaran Hills.