Guild Wars 2

I played several builds yesterday and found I had the most success with a build exactly the same as this except I use double swords so opted for Fencer’s Finesse over Evasive Mirror and Illusionary Inspiration over Mental Defense.

With a Knights amulet I found sustain rather good though damage was a bit lacking. Will have to try out with Mauraders/Berserkers and Mental Defense later tonight.

Zmodd.5427:

Silverkey.2078:

@Zmodd, then you loose the stun break which is pretty sweet. Or make the whole skill a stun break which will make it way easier to use (although they would need to reduce the casting time to instant, which they won’t do)

Exactly, merge Illusionary Leap with Swap.

I think you guys are suggesting this change because you are seeing just the benefits of offensively using an iLeap > Blurred Frenzy combo but to make this change would be a nerf to the skill to me and others who use the skill for both offense and defense. Defensively, you can drop an iLeap clone on a melee target (warrior/thief), dodge away/kite to bait gap closing abilities/stuns, and then use swap to juke your target. This is an important ability I use to mitigate melee damage and to make this change would drastically reduce my survivability.

With the way iLeap works right now, you can also use it to get away from another person while fighting near a cliff. Drop clone on target, jump down cliff and wait for your target to jump down also, then swap/teleport back up the cliff.

Robert said he increased the delay before a clone appeared from iLeap to give players a bit of a “fudge” factor so that players would have a better chance of being in range of their target to use the skill. I didn’t agree with this idea/logic when he mentioned it and after playing with it the other day, still disagree with it.

The problem people had in finding the proper range to use iLeap was mainly due to a lack of experience using the skill. The “problem” would have eventually solved itself on its own (from increased player experience) since there was no bug with the actual skill as far as I know.

Adding a delay to iLeap to help inexperienced players is flawed/bad for several reasons:

1) It assumes the target is stationary and you are moving towards the target as this is really the only situation in which it might help a newer player in using iLeap. If the target is moving away from you at a faster rate than you are moving towards it or if you and your target are both moving towards each other, adding this delay does not help and in fact makes it harder to use the skill successfully/optimally.

2) Adding a delay prevents players from immediately dodging after using the skill which is something a lot of players do. (For example, drop clone on target, dodge away to avoid hits, and use leap to get back on target/break stun.) Before the change, it was a calculated risk as to whether or not you should use a dodge immediately or try and get an iLeap clone out before using your dodge. It was a fine balance and the fluidity of the skill has changed for the worse in my opinion.

3) Adding delays to any range skilled to help people having a hard time finding the correct range is just a bad/flawed idea. If this is the reason for adding a delay to iLeap, why not add delays to every other ranged ability?

TLDR; Adding delay for clone was never something we needed and makes the skill worse.

I agree that its too early to tell if DPS is too high. People are used to running glass builds and will either need to adapt to stay glassy or will need to sacrifice some of their glassiness for more sustain. As the meta shifts, you’ll be able to gauge better if its going in the right direction or the wrong direction.

You need time to figure out not just your own builds but the builds that other classes are using. Once you gain more experience figuring out what you need to watch out for from other classes, incoming DPS will naturally decrease from what you’re experiencing now.

I used to run a berserker glass build pre-patch and noticed that I was having trouble staying alive after the patch with DPS so high. This is not necessarily a bad thing as I’m trying out different builds now that I would not have considered in the past (e.g., more defensive amulets and traits). Also, I’m enjoying the playstyle for what it is as its a change of pace from the past and we may not see it again once balancing occurs.

If you set the bar high, then there’s that much more you can strive for and part of the fun of playing is seeing how far you can push yourself.

Alpha.1308:

heheueheuueuheuuehuehueheuheuehueuheuhueheuheuheUHEUHEUHEUEHUEH
every hit you make heals allies for around 300
can i throw money at my screen to have this stay

Lol, make it rain buddy!

frifox.5283:

I pulled off the most DPS with Malice (10% condi duration) & Agony (20% bleed duration). Other notable boosts were Bursting and Strength, but they weren’t as good as those two above. I haven’t ran any math with Sigil of Earth so no idea how it compares to others.

How is condition duration calculated if the duration bonus is different between your weapon sets and you switch weapons in combat? For instance, will condition duration on conditions I’ve casted dynamically get adjusted if I switch from a weapon set without Malice to a weaponset with Malice? Or is the condition duration calculated upon cast?

MSFone.3026:

I really think people are majorly overreacting with all this “shelve my mesmer” stuff. We still got a huge amount of buffs, and it remains to be seen what kind of condi builds we can do. I mean isn’t chaos/dueling/illusions going to be pretty crazy? All the staff goodness, PU, scepter and torch buffs, DE and bleeds and confusion on crits. Yeah, not at all obvious to me that this is the end of the world…

Edit Edit: Just read about confusing combatants change; this is dumb.

Its too early to see how this change will play out but I’m worried about what this nerf foretells of our future. Robert has given me hope that our class can be viable/powerful/fun to play once again but if past experience is anything to go on, this nerf is just the beginning of a series of nerfs to our class that will ultimately lead us back to the situation we were in before this trait revamp.

There will be lots of cries of nerfing 6/23 for all classes and my hope is that Anet does not overreact and nerf abilities/traits into the ground as an easy fix which has been Anets approach in the past.

We’ve gone down this road before and I won’t be shelving my mesmer if this is to occur again but I won’t delude myself into ever getting hyped about mesmer changes again only to have the rug pulled out from underneath us.

Advent.6193:

cyyrix.6105:

Petition for Anet to ban Karl and Jon from touching mesmer, leaving the decisions up to Robert Gee.

All of my Yes. Hell, keep ’em away from my Thief, too. >_<

Double amen.

I don’t know if this nerf is Karl or Jon’s doing but it became clear to me from watching the live stream that very few people at Anet know what they are doing as far as class balancing/design is concerned. Some of these lead designers (not counting Robert) seemed to know little about their classes outside of the notes they came prepared with.

In addition to the dot change, why not change confusion from a flat damage per attack to a percent damage per attack? In other words, scale the damage confusion does based on the strength of the incoming attack. Wouldn’t this help even out the disparity between slow and fast attacks?

Boaz.1694:

Rangers with bows are often kicked from PvE group content. There are guild runs and friend groups that will take Ranger, yes, but other classes are preferred because they can do what Rangers can plus bring group benefits/buffs that put them ahead of Rangers.

I find this hard to believe. I pug 99% of the time and out of over 100+ dungeon/fractal groups have never been kicked or seen another ranger get kicked. In fact, I can’t recall ever being in a group where anyone was kicked (and I’ve played with plenty of bad players including other Rangers) so I don’t understand how you are being kicked often from groups.

You must be doing something out of the ordinary, like using knockbacks on cooldown which would annoy your teammates, doing pitiful damage, or are joining elite speed groups.

Rangers are probably somewhere in the middle in regards to desirability and should not have a problem joining a group.

I would consider not using Decoy at the start of a fight. Decoy is very versatile (can be used offensively and defensively) but has a long cooldown. Typically you want to save your “Aces” for when you really need them and that means trying to hold onto them as long as you think possible. I generally never use Decoy at the start of a fight unless its against someone that I think I have a 50/50 percent chance against. For example, against a good mesmer who uses Decoy at the start of a fight.

The other issues you mentioned (e.g., when to use Distortion, using S#2 defensively, landing immob) are all things you’ll get better at with more practice.

I never really got into PU but would recommend it simply because its not squishy and allows the user to live long enough to actually get a feel for the class. (Unlike a warrior, Mesmer relies primarily on active defenses to survive so its important that you get familiar with them as soon as possible.) Shatter is really squishy and requires pretty in-depth knowledge of the class to pull off well. Using Shatter as a beginner, you won’t get much of a chance to learn since you’ll be eating dirt within 10 seconds of engaging any competent enemy most of the time.

Personally, I went with a full on tank build early on and just practiced surviving and getting familiar with weapon skills, abilities, and rotations. Once you get a feel for the weapons, you’ll probably come to find some that you like more than others and that will probably help point you into some builds you can try out with them.

BrazenNL.9857:

My Mom was right, I am special.

Hi Mom!

Lol

40 – If you find something fun, you will continue at it no matter how old you are.

witcher.3197:

Leodon.1564:

it can be viable depending on the situation, playstyle, and desired results. That can only be decided by the OP.

By that logic everything is viable (in very specific scenarios) and there is no point at asking questions about viability.

If out of 100 sword shatter mesmers 99 picks Torch then I think that happens for a reason. I bet I could count on one hand how many off-hand sword guys I’ve met in 2015, or 2014-’15.

Yes, I kind of do feel that every weapon is viable for roaming/sPVP (casual play) in which the majority are not “great” players as you say. Weapons aren’t horribly balanced against each other (well, maybe scepter :P); there are pros and cons to each. Ultimately, what the OP decides to use will be based on his preference but I think he just wanted to hear some affirmation on whether or not there were other S/S users who have had success with the weapon combo and their experiences.

I don’t deny that off-hand sword users are less common to see (I kind of like that) but that is not what the OP was questioning as he already mentioned that other sword/x combinations were more prevalent.

witcher.3197:

(…)

Most of your comments are very black and white (e.g., "Torch is a better defensive option than off-hand sword, OP should definitely use that. ") when there are a lot of grey areas. The OP wanted to know if S/S was viable for roaming and sPVP and as others have pointed out, it can be viable depending on the situation, playstyle, build, and desired results. That can only be decided by the OP.

I never really liked Torch because of the long cooldowns and prefer the playstyle of S/S. There are times when the extra stealth from Torch would have saved my life but there are probably just as many times where the cc (daze), block, damage from block and harder hitting phantasm with a shorter cooldown (ie. extra damage being the tipping point in killing my enemy), has saved my life as well. To me, its a much more well rounded (versatile) offhand weapon due to the combination of offensive/defensive abilities and shorter cooldowns. Plus it just looks bad-kitten .

I know others use Torch with great success so I know what its capable of but I would not say its the best and only option.

Belial.9350:

So count to 5, then dodge when they’re in range of you?

Counting is not really reliable imo because of all the variables that occur during combat. (e.g., warrior may not choose to weapon swap every 5 seconds, may not have fast hands, may not have doom, etc) Its pretty easy to just see the weapon swap and then know that you may be hit with a sigil proc on his next attack. Doom shows up as a buff on the enemy so if you can learn to identify what it looks like, you’ll be able to tell when you will want to dodge/avoid his next attack.

Or try and make a mental note of the weapon that the warrior is using as soon as you notice Poison on you. Next time he switches to that weapon again, you’ll know that you’ll need to avoid his next weapon attack without needing to look for the Doom buff.

TheFantasticGman.9451:

Of things to complain about this is extremely low on my list

Seriously…

witcher.3197:

Sebrent.3625:

Many of us used to play Shatter with Staff / Sword+Sword all the time to great results.

Not sure what has changed that has people feeling this is less plausible nowadays.

Because you are likely playing it to great reasults vs not so great players.

I don’t see your point. If he is able to successfully use a build against his competition (whether they are great or poor is irrelevant) then the build has accomplished what he set it out to do. Why rain on his parade with comments that imply, go meta or go home?

Fay.2357:

Leodon.1564:

Fay.2357:

For open world PvE, Gs + sw/focus is far and away your best weapon set.

For what reason do you consider focus the best offhand?

Focus has swiftness, aoe control (allows you to group mobs up easily) and an aoe phantasm. Open world mob aren’t tough, you don’t need the dps output of offhand sword. What you do want is the ability to kill bunches of them at once.

I figured it was the swiftness but really for leveling you should be using a Sigil of Speed for near perma swiftness. Hadn’t thought about the AOE and agree that would be a good reason to use it.

Fay.2357:

For open world PvE, Gs + sw/focus is far and away your best weapon set.

For what reason do you consider focus the best offhand?

Its been a long time since I leveled a Mesmer but I’d recommend using a sword for your offhand over the torch. Torch really doesn’t offer much DPS and is used more in condition type builds and also for its utility. Offhand sword will provide extra damage which is more of what you need to level.

Also, what level are you and your current traits, if any?

baylock.1703:

Not sure if I’m only 1 who sees something amazing in it.
You start with f5 do shatter combo use signet wile in rift mode do shatters again come out of rift do shatter combo use signet again use f5 again do another shatter combo in rift come out of it than you can do 1 more

So total 5 shatter combos and bc new trait gives illusion when you shatter 1 you only need to set up 1 illusion

You just broke the space-time continuum…

Daniel Handler.4816:

Illusions are impermanent. They will be destroyed by enemies or by the player overwriting them, regardless of whether a shatter takes place. Because they are AI, to not give the player the ability to destroy them is kinda cruel. And since they will be destroyed, giving players an ability to destroy them and gain benefit makes sense. Why is it the class mechanic? Because we will always be summoning illusions regardless of what is on our utility bar.

I have no problems with the idea of destroying our phantasms/illusions to gain a benefit or that shattering is our class mechanic.

The problem I have lies in the fact that too much of our DPS is dependent on our phantasms/shatters (our DPS delivery method). DPS is too important in this game for it be at the mercy of a pet AI, which is inflexible and cannot adapt as a player can.

Randomness seems to be a reoccurring theme with our class, as seen in several of our traits/abilities that provide random buffs/effects. The idea is that occasionally you get a meaningless buff, sometimes you get a semi-useful buff, and other times you get the buff you actually want at any particular moment. This creates a “feast or famine” type of situation for these traits which I am not a fan of because the traits are generally balanced around best case scenarios which means the traits have more of a “satisfied or famine” type feel to them.

While I am ok with this since I can choose not to take these traits/abilities, this idea also spills over to our DPS.

Our DPS fluctuates wildly and is balanced around best case scenarios. As a phantasm mesmer, that means our total DPS is generally balanced around having 3 phantasms up on a single target. But how often does this actually happen in gameplay? Sometimes we can accomplish this but for the majority of the time, for whatever reason, this is not the case. We are constantly in this middle ground, where we occasionally dip really low and occasionally hit our stride. Except at our peak, our DPS is lower than the majority of other classes.

Daniel Handler.4816:

As for having both uniqueness and viability. I don’t like the mentality that we aren’t viable, that is what I seek to debate. And what is viability to you?

I probably should have not said viable because that does imply that Mesmers are unable to do content or is unable to join groups. That is not what I meant. Content in this game is relatively easy and I can only think of a few cases where a Mesmer cannot do something that another class can. (I’m ok with this.)

On my Ranger, my DPS output does not vary widely. The class is designed in a way so you can stay at relative peak DPS performance, no matter the situation. This is what I meant when I said that mesmers are not viable in a variety of encounters. Our DPS fluctuates wildly because its tied to a pet AI, with all of its limitations.

Aleksander Suburb.4287:

We don’t need more space. We need fewer different currency-items and all this stuff. Put the endless-tonics into a own register like the minis. Get a valuable use for all the dragonit, bloodstone etc., don’t design twenty another keys for some chests. Or another boost for xp, magic find etc.

Yes, I prefer the less is more approach also. Instead of having 5 or 6 different levels of mining picks (e.g., copper, iron, steel, darksteel mining picks), it would be better to just have one mining pick and have the ores themselves take away a varying number of charges from the tool. (E.g, copper only takes one charge from a mining pick while orichalcum takes 5 charges.) The net effect should remain the same but you increase the quality of life for the player and increase storage space by having less clutter around.

Daniel Handler.4816:

Except a destroyed phantasm does no damage. And all phantasms are eventually destroyed, I see no issue with allowing a mesmer to benefit from that destruction.

I am not sure what point you are trying to make and you lost me on “…I see no issue with allowing a mesmer to benefit from that destruction.”

Daniel Handler.4816:

And I feel like “viable in a variety of situations” just refers to speed dungeon runs.

No, speed dungeon runs actually did not cross my mind but I guess it could be used as an example in which our DPS delivery method fails to deliver if the example holds true for you. Any time you put the majority of a classes DPS into the hands of a pet AI (which is what our phantasms/shatters boil down to), that class is going to have a much harder time competing against other non-pet classes in DPS due to the inability for the pet AI to adapt.

Daniel Handler.4816:

I don’t debate the math, I debate the mentality.

I don’t want to debate math either. My numbers were just rough estimates to emphasize the points I was trying to make which is that using our core mechanic reduces our total DPS significantly and takes a while for us to get back to max DPS. This is a tough pill to swallow considering the payoff.

As far as my mentality, I think you are trying to imply that I am some arrogant speed dungeon runner. Seeing that I can’t prove otherwise and have no interest in debating it, debate away!

Daniel Handler.4816:

Also remember that uniqueness and viability are occasionally opposites.

Yes, but can we not have both?

maha.7902:

a class not being strong at all encounters is a design flaw?

maybe we should just delete all of the classes and make one called “fighter” which does everything, then we can solve this design flaw.

I did not say that a class had to be strong at all encounters nor is that what I meant. I am all for maintaining class differences but things are relative and most other classes (I’m excluding Necros as I hear they are in a similar boat as ours) have a much better ability to perform reasonably well in a variety of encounters. Mesmers require certain specific variables to be present in order to perform reasonably well and fall off dramatically when those variables are not met.

1) AOE hard counters the primary source of our damage (shatters/phantasms) and AOE is abundant in this game.

2) Mesmer phantasms can be compared to Ranger pets except our phantasms account for a larger portion of our total dps, cannot be controlled, dies after the initial target dies, and requires a significant ramp up time before max DPS is achieved. Rangers complain about their pets which I don’t necessarily agree with (I play Ranger also) but imagine if their pets acted like our phantasms? As a mesmer, we have very little control or options in overcoming the limitations of our phantasms which so heavily accounts for our total DPS. Imo, it is almost always a bad design choice to tie in a classes DPS potential to a pet AI (especially so when the AI is poor and cannot be controlled.)

As a Ranger, I can expect to perform at a consistent and reasonable level in a variety of encounters. I have options available that allow me to adapt on the fly as the situation changes. I don’t have these options as a Mesmer.

Fay.2357:

Phantasms, by their nature, are sustained dps. This means you want to put them up and keep them up, and this takes time and effort for each mob. With shatters, you just pop up a couple clones and then explode them. It takes very little time between DE and weapon skills, and doesn’t give them a lot of chance to be smushed by aoes.

You’re phrasing it like there is no problem but that is the problem. Too much of our DPS is dependent on class abilities (phantasms/shatters) that are inflexible and have a wide margin for how effective they are depending on the situation.

You mention that you need to keep phantasms up for each mob and that is the nature of our sustained DPS. You are ok with a DPS delivery method that encourages you to not use your class mechanic in order to do the most consistent DPS (which isn’t that great to begin with) and varies greatly depending on how many phantasms you can maintain? How much control do you have in keeping your Phantasms alive?

For shatters, you mentioned that your clones don’t have much chance to be smushed and that is true for small engagements but can you say that your statement remains true as the engagement scales bigger?

As long as our DPS is tied down to a method that we have no real control over and can be neutralized by something as simple as AOE, the strength of our class will vary greatly from encounter to encounter which is an inherent design flaw to me.

Fay.2357:

Leodon.1564:

Fay.2357:

There’s no inherent issue with shatters in PvE. The reason they’re bad is simply that they don’t do nearly as much sustained damage as phantasms do. If through some unknown series of buffs this ceases to be the case, then they’ll be perfectly viable.

One inherent issue with shatters is that they die too easily from AOE which eliminates your ability to generate enough shatter fodder for even mediocre damage in these types of encounters.

This isn’t even remotely true. Phantasms also die in 1 shot from any mob in a dungeon, so there’s no difference at all.

You’re right so I’ll rephrase, phantasms AND shatters have always been a wonky DPS delivery method and have deep inherent flaws that keep the class always feeling hamstrung. (E.g., phantasms/shatters being ineffective in AOE situations, having phantasms be our main source of consistent DPS which encourages us to not use our main core mechanic (shatters), phantasms/shatter being tied down to individual enemies which prevent you from quickly switching dps from one target to the next, etc.)

I think the lead class designer (Robert?) is trying to address some of these issues in HoT with our new specialization traits so I guess we’ll have to wait and see if they are enough to overcome some of the core issues with our class. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately), he wasn’t part of the original team that designed the class, so I do get the feeling that our class is sort of being pulled in different directions that may leave certain past design choices (confusion maybe) feeling less powerful/overlooked.

Hindsight is 20/20 and I’m hoping one day that Anet will look at our class and address the issues that plague the foundation of this class. Until that happens, we may be just getting bandaid “fixes” from one patch/expansion to the next.

Buran.3796:

The central area of Foefire’s Legacy is probably much closer to what one could expect for a TDM map. Courtyard is too narrow in some parts and is full of obstructing elements that obscures the gameplay. Any random 5 vs 5 match in Foefire or WvW is better.

The gameplay mechanic is also clunky: as was said, there’s a snowball effect. To prevent this the game mode should work in “waves”: every team starts in their ·home", run towards the center, and after 2-3 minutes everyone gets a restart (if all of the memeners of a team dies then a new wave starts from the initial waypoints).

Yup, I feel like I’m playing hide-and-seek in there.

Fay.2357:

There’s no inherent issue with shatters in PvE. The reason they’re bad is simply that they don’t do nearly as much sustained damage as phantasms do. If through some unknown series of buffs this ceases to be the case, then they’ll be perfectly viable.

One inherent issue with shatters is that they die too easily from AOE which eliminates your ability to generate enough shatter fodder for even mediocre damage in these types of encounters. Shatter has always been a wonky DPS delivery method and created too much with 1v1 encounters in mind.

While the mesmer class is still my favorite class, I don’t think Anet had a clear/well thought out idea of how to implement it from the very beginning so that it could remain viable in a variety of situations. (It was the last class to be finished/designed and I felt that it was rushed out to meet the game’s release date.)

I think Anet has been trying to bandaid the class ever since but either the lead designer does not know what to do or does not have enough clout to make the changes needed to properly “fix” the class. I think its the former as I read somewhere that Anet was disheartened to find out that there were mesmer builds in which players never used the core’s class mechanic (shattering).

Seriously, who comes up with a class mechanic where upon its use, you destroy your primary source of sustained damage (phantasms) and then wonder why people are reluctant to shatter? What did they think was going to happen?

To put this into perspective, would a Guardian want to use their Virtues if every time they used it, their DPS decreased by about 2/3rd initially and then slowly built back up to 100% after 10-20 seconds? The payoff would have to be significant in order to offset the drastic reduction in DPS. Currently for Mesmers, that offset is only achieved by the use of the F1 ability for its burst. (F3 and F4 does not offer enough of a payoff to use them on cooldown or to make builds around.)

I don’t think tying mesmer DPS to one F1 ability was a good decision by Anet. Either all of the F1-F4 abilities should do damage (in different, useful ways so that their is a choice) or they should all be utility skills, like F3 and F4 currently is. Personally, I think it should have been the latter. (F3 and F4 are class defining skills; Decoy and Blink are examples of other class defining skills that could have taken up the F1 and F2 spots.)

Dungeons are horrible in this game and offer no challenge whatsoever. There is no synergy between party members, other than a simple combo system and group-wide buffs/heals that aren’t engaging.

Running past/invising through the majority of the dungeon only to occasionally stop and stack tightly in a corner while spamming your abilities on cooldown is what the average dungeon-runner can expect to do in this game.

Magira.6390:

I play all 8 classes regularly and most solo. 7 are close together. By far the best Win% has my Power Ranger, which is almost 20% more than any other.

I doubt that you are a master at all 8 classes and would wager that a good deal of your success is due to how easy Ranger is to pick up and play compared to other classes. Being able to deal great burst damage at range and having simple rotations allows for most to pickup the class and do ok in PVP.

Other classes require more practice/skill before you can achieve similar results.

If you are playing ranger, are you using your pets/utilities to keep the mesmer locked down? A mesmer that is feared/rooted/slowed is much easier to deal with. As you know already, mesmers have great active defenses but it doesn’t last forever.

Wait/bait for an opening and unload.

Considering I just solo’d one of Mordremoth’s top lieutenant with a bow and arrow plus my pet dog, I’d say yes.

Oops! I Did It Again.

apharma.3741:

All nice ideas but what I’d rather see is the precision aspect removed and sword skills deal bonus damage to targets with no boons.

-20% CD, Sword skills do 50% more damage to boonless targets.

And yes, it is painfully obvious I’m thinking of PvE but hey, it’ll take a lot of skill getting that damage buff going in PvP.

P.s. Before someone cries OP, you will still do a lot less than the normal auto attack from other classes.

50% damage on sword skills would help us in the PVE department, where we lack at the moment. Our personal dps (i.e. sword attacks) is supposed to be supplementary to the damage dealt by our illusions but even still, 50% seems a bit too high to me.

If you figure that our sword attacks account for 1/3 of our total DPS (no clue what the actual numbers are), then a 20-30% increase to sword damage should net out to a 7-10% increase in our total DPS.

Ithamir.5928:

Thank you so much! Tell Robert we love him. These traits look amazing. Maybe except for All’s Well that Ends Well…

Yes, please thank Robert and his team for coming up with some new and out-of-box ideas for the mesmer instead of just slapping on additional numbers to our current traits and calling it a day.

Unfortunately, because of how good this traitline is compared to our other traits, I think a lot of mesmers are gonna be hard pressed NOT to take this traitline. On first glance, Superspeed on Shatter seems like it should be a base line trait and how shatters should have worked from the beginning of launch. (Shatters not hitting targets reliably has been a fundamental complaint of mesmers from beta.) To make it available now in a traitline, seems rather unfair to the players who have been clamoring for this “fix”. (I’m calling it a fix because thats what it seems to me.)

How much of a DPS loss would it be to run LB over Axe/Mace in a support Phalanx Strength dungeon build?

I realize Axe/Mace is superior for damage but am wondering what the difference is.

Windu The Forbidden One.6045:

‘Ranger’ would have made more sense though lmao.

When I heard Dragonhunter, I immediately thought of Ranger. Being a pet/hunter type class, I could see the connection of hunting a dragon as a specialization for the Ranger class.

I see absolutely no connection between Dragonhunter and the Guardian class, or to any other class for that matter.

I basically had the same experience as the original poster. Played mesmer from beta, leveled to 80, and PVP’d exclusively on and off for the last 4 years.

I found Mesmer mechanics just too frustrating for open world PVEing so never bothered to do any of it.

Unless HoT solves these issues, I’d suggest just leveling another toon for PVE.

1) Ranger with LB
2) Ele with Staff
3) See 1 and 2

Edit: On a serious note, Warrior, Necro, and Engineers have good ranged options, though not as good as Ranger or Ele imo. Guards lack ranged options and Mesmer illusions just get eaten in any zerg type of environment (World bosses and WvW come to mind). Log into the PVP room and find what suits you best.

Brother Grimm.5176:

Note that you need to get a MYSTIC FORGE SALVAGE KIT as soon as possible as it will allow you to get a good chance of retaining upgrades off of old equipment at a lower kit cost. It does take some initial investment but provides 250 salvages with a HIGH rate of upgrade return (I would not suggest using MF kit this on ALL salvage items….just what you want to get upgrades from).

Per above, the ONLY thing I would suggest possibly buying (from the TP or via karma NPC) is +POWER jewelry (since very little is given as reward and NEVER drops) and possibly one or 2 of the RARE (racial) weapons you can get at LVL 40 and 60. Beyond that, save your gold and karma.

While a Mystic Forge Salvage Kit is nice, its hardly worth using it to salvage blues and greens, especially when you consider how cheap Minor and Rare Sigils are. It will probably save you a few silver at most when using it for Sigils you want to keep during the leveling up process.

Also, for efficient leveling, there is no reason not to buy all your armor/weapons/accessories off the TP. If you buy blue quality gear, you will be able to sell it back on the TP for what you paid for them (at the very least). As for a weapon, you should buy a green one as they usually don’t go for more than a few silvers and is the single best gear investment for increasing your killing speed (and thus coin/loot/exp per hour).

As a rule of thumb, affordable gear upgrades are available every 5 levels. Place orders for gear ahead of time so that you can get them for cheap.

For sigils, Bloodlust is OP at lower levels but tapers off around your level I think (30-40) but is still a nice sigil. Sigil of Speed (perma Swiftness) is really nice from 0-80 and dirt cheap to buy.

Toughness would benefit a melee weapon/class more than it would a ranged weapon/class. With that in mind, I would think Warrior Sword would be a good choice since the majority of its damage comes from close range bleeds.

However, you may want to save it for HoT instead if you plan on playing a Revenant since that class seems to be about tanking and dishing out conditions from what I hear. (Also, the black/shadowy appearance of the weapon would go great with the Revenant class.)

You are reading too much into it. In fact, I don’t really understand why YOU would call someone a lunatic because of some minor detail in a conversation that you found questionable.

You need to cut these people some slack and realize they are human and allowed to make mistakes without pouncing on them at every opportunity.

I agree this trait opens up diversity in play style. Use it to get MORE of what you need at any particular moment, whether it be cc, single target dps, aoe, etc.

Windsagio.1340:

You see what you want to see.

Yup, I was just going to make a post praising Anet for making bold changes. They don’t always work out but they have the balls to at least try and find out what works and doesn’t.

Compare the game now to what it was when it first came out and the game is going in the right direction.

I would LOVE 4 (especially with some awesome fighting animations to go with it) but also feel like it will be 1.

New to the ranger class and currently having a lot of fun with it but am a bit frustrated with how finicky the sword auto attack is.

I would like to get some feedback on the following suggestions which I think would make the auto attack smoother. (I’m pretty sure these ideas have already been thought of before.)

1) Moving your character breaks the sword auto attack chain immediately. You do the first attack of the auto chain only until you remain stationary, at which point you continue with the chain again.

2) The leaps from the auto attack chain pushes my character into the middle of a boss/mob making it difficult to even see my character at times. Make the leaps stop at outer edges of the mobs hit box instead.

3) Make S#2 break the auto attack chain immediately like S#3.