Guild Wars 2

Fernling.1729:

This is definitely the least interesting specialization released so far. Kind of sucks, I had high hopes for the Guardian. I’m just hoping the thief isn’t as big of a let down.

This is literally the second specialization they have revealed so far (outside the name tempest). It was either going to be “this is the best specialization they released so far” or “this is the worst specialization so far”. We don’t even know how it works yet, but I’m looking forward to trying it. But seriously, did you consider sounding less extreme and simply typing “this to me seems worse than the mesmer specialization”?

I too hope that the thief specialization is awesome. But I can see how people would be a little let down (with the information so far) when the chronomancer sounded like the coolest thing ever. I think a lot of people drooled over that one. I bet the guardian “traps” will be cool, and I’m looking forward to tomorrows reveal.

But….But… Mesmers only got an off-hand weapon. So clearly this new 2 handed specialization is better.

On a serious note, I may consider rerolling to guardian if this spec looks cool. I like the idea of a mobile range trapper, but found rangers get boring eventually. (Since I love playing burst in pvp and ranger burst is boring, compared to thief, mes, ele, engie (these are my only classes))

Like a lot of people, I still haven’t settled on a class for HoT.

However I want to make a suggestion on a funny strategy. Call it “Gopher Up”. Have everyone scatter and drop portals, the zerg then moves from portal to portal that are scattered everywhere. Looking like the old game of whack a mole. It would be funny to hear, and funny to watch. Good luck with your group, and I hope I get to see it. (I’m on FA too)

Iève always thought it simply interupted a rez. You can play normally as a moa, but your skills are changed and decreased. Evading, rezing, I imagine if you got out of combat you could use a ballista…XD

I hate to be that guy, but in case this hasn’t been brought up before. I do not see any evidence that legendary effects will persist through kits. So half of the problem with kits will, possibly, not be going away. Sure you won’t see that hobosack anymore, but when your grenade kit is in your hand, your legendary rifle, etc will still be gone. I hope I’m wrong, as I doubt there will be another fix to kits for a long time. I hope they get it right this time.

If kits still make you lose the special effects of your legendary (footsteps, glow) it would be a very disappointing change.

There are a few important things you can do to improve your game.

1) Play other classes.
Even if you don’t plan on playing all of them; try playing the few that interest you. Level them up (nowadays its slow to unlock things), or go into heart of the mists with a few meta builds. Among them there may be the ones killing you. Learning how other classes play and work is pivotal to success in 1v1 or 1v2.

2) Learn to use the minimap.
The minimap is INVALUABLE for pvp. No good player ignores the minimap. Positioning for a team is often the deciding factor in who wins team fights, and the game. Knowing where you should be, will leave you feeling good, because you helped your team and won the battle.
Do not fight people 1v1 if you can’t. Leave a point, run and outnumber the enemies with your teammates. Don’t be a turret, and wait for your enemies to come to you. Although there are some exceptions to this. Again, prioritize team positioning, and more of your encounters will go well.

3) Build somewhat defensive,If you feel yourself getting killed easily by your enemies. For the classes that you don’t want to play yourself, you can learn how to counter their skills by experience, but only if you survive long enough to understand their build.

Good luck and feel free to post specifics (build/professions). A lot of people here went through the same feeling when they started pvp. These are the basics I can think of. Aside from keybinds and dodging properly, but those apply to PVE as well.

I’m not saying they don’t suck, but I’m pointing out that the same people this build killed before are dying now… XD Obviously I had to change my build a bit to not rely so heavily on turrets. Otherwise, I’m using 5 turret traits, 2 turrets and 2 kits, elite supply drop. Pretty effective 1v1 for defending a node. Also, can assist team fights.

Hey guys and gals,

I decided to try the new turret engineer today in pvp (even though I didn’t like the play style in the past). I continued to use a zerker amulet, but switched my healing turret for a med kit, and riffle turret for nades. The result was hilarious. I destroyed a thief who angrily kept coming for me all game. Seems like the build is just as effective at killing noobs, and even better at killing people who are noobs and follow the forums. I had many different players coming to 1v1 me on point it was hilarious. Almost made me like to play the build. My team was worried that I’d be useless, but I ended up with the highest score on my team and we won… Was really surprised to see I had scored 155 as a turret, but it feels like these changes only served to remove the completely braindead turret build and give my opponents more confidence than they should have.

I hope everyone else takes this time to come up with new turret builds that reck bads.

3 people who came to kill me that game were a power necro (without lich, so I didn’t have to run), shoutbow (he would spend 2-5 minutes just dancing with me while I control the point before dying to my allies showing up) and thief (who was playing like a chicken with his head cut off, was really funny, but maybe that’s cause thief is my longest running main and I know that class really well)

So why don’t you share your turret stories since the patch.

FYI, my biggest reason for playing turret today, was I’m getting really bad lag (250ms), so I didn’t want to play my harder builds.

That would be awesome!

I agree with changing concealed defeat. The trait is terrible and hurts thieves more than helps. Replace the downed part with something else.

Suggestion:
Deceiving Defeat:
Gain a charge of deceiving defeat for each kill, the player gains stealth for 1 second per charge upon leaving combat. (Maximum 5 charges) Deception abilities recharge 20% faster.

Not something stellar, but better than what it is in its current iteration.

Blinding powder on down is also a good idea. But don’t leave the trait as is. Take the opportunity with these changes to remove all the clutter, and add flavor.

Pin Down… Not nearly as powerful as Fierce Blow on Hammer, have you seen that weakness uptime… NERF! I once got pinned down and weakened, the warrior then proceeded to have his way with me.

Bio Flame.4276:

I just fought against an Engi Cancer build, with a DPS guardian.

Even though I am full Zerker and on a DPS guardian, it took some time to kill 4 turrets, while still having to dodge / LOS their attacks AND dealing with the engi.

I don’t think the proposed change is going to change much, tbh. Not enough.

I don’t think I can even bring myself to point out whats wrong with this… lol

It took you a long time to kill 4 turrets…. I guess I said it, why in Kormir’s Light would you attack all 4 turrets, unless the engineer just place them all in a small circle on the point. Regardless, your story sounds really strange; and has nothing to do with balance what so ever. They don’t balance pvp with how long it takes you to kill a bunch of useless turrets. Kill the rocket turret, and focus the engineer. Of course, only attack a point if you know you can take it/decap it in a reasonable time frame. Turret engineers have gotten even weaker as more people finally know how to fight them in ranked. (I only solo queue)

Wait, so builds in pvp will be even more focused with the added trait stats moving to the amulet? Please consider adding jewels or a stat slider to distribute the missing stats. I don’t want to get an assassin amulet and have 0 vitality. Some amulets will be non-viable with this kind of change.

I’m thinking that they are removing racial skills. I can’t imagine they will make a category for them to unlock like the rest, and this whole change is to streamline the traits and abilities together into a straight forward acquisition system. I don’t see racial abilities fitting into this new system. I could be wrong. We’ll have to wait and see some news from A-Net. But I would’t be so sad. I mean they see to be making mortar into charzooka 2.0. I think they will try and incorporate some of the racial ideas into the new elite specializations. Like avatar of melandru could be a druid ability. We’ll see, but I’m not sure how racials fit into the new paradigm.

The change to bunker down is really sad. In my latest changes to my SD engie build, I’ve been using bunker down to great success. I love watching players down me, only to walk over for a stomp and get blown to the down state themselves. And since I focus so kitten map awareness, I’m often the one who gets saved by my teamates. Its also great extra burst if you use it carefully with overcharged shot. Knocking an enemy into 3 mines along with 2 instant static discharge abilities is crazy burst.

Very sad to lose my build.

Don’t forget Rangers are getting some nice buffs to burst as well. Its annoying avoiding a rapid fire, but what about 2 rapid fires back to back, with a pet who’s F2 (any pet, even birds) pulls you towards them with taunt allowing them to hit you again. If you get caught off guard with limited cooldowns against a ranger in the expansion, prepare to be destroyed. I’m wondering a lot how the evade attacks with swiftness will work. If dodging the first part of rapid fire will be enough to greatly reduce its damage, than acro thieves have some kind of response to this, but nothing bothers me more about the thief changes than the ranger changes. If they improve shouts, you might even get revealed once by them. Basically, rangers will serve as thief denial. You won’t be able to enter 1500 yards of ranger without good los and a plan on how you are going to get out.

My old unkillable ranger for pvp is Dead. I don’t think any ranger trait set-up comes close to the old unkillable build. I’ve posted it somewhere, but its a cleric build with survival utilities and bark skin. Double melee. It takes about 4 players to take me out, and since its such an unusual build, even good players struggle to kill you. You’ll almost never kill anyone though.

My philosophy with the old build was I could fight 2 players forever, 3 would bring me to 33% with bark skin, and a 4th could kill me. Had a lot of success with the build when I played it last. Just run onto the enemy home point before they cap, and stay there all game. I can near perma evade on the build with constant healing and amazing control for when things turn sour. Truly fun, and since I won’t be playing Ranger in HoT, I’m sort of glad its gone, so I won’t feel inclined to go back and play it.

Laraley.7695:

leman.7682:

Gryph.8237:

Anet = bias. It is so clear which classes receive attention and what classes they laugh at. Gw2 has become a placeholder for me until another mmo comes out that lacks this juvenile bias. Terrible and unprofessional devs.

Unfortunately, I have to agree. Seeing Davis and Peters joke about necros and rangers on every possibility kind of show their professionalism or lack thereof.

And seeing as many things they stated were false, therefore not knowing the traits fully, makes me worried about the balance.

Don’t worry about those classes for this reason. They were making countless mistakes on every class I play. (Thief, Engie, Ranger, Ele) Not knowing what minor already exist, or what are the classes grandmaster traits… So don’t let it get to you. I just went over all this with my thief. Trying to make some good builds and found a bunch. Overall, the system is more restrictive. But for professions that lacked diversity (Thief, Ele) in viable builds I think this will be an improvement. I still have to try and make a few engineer builds (as I’m not interested in ranger gameplay anymore, but it looks like more of the same, endless theorycrafting for good builds which blow unaware players up in seconds). I have a feeling classes like engineer and ranger are going to see a reduction in builds. But I’m not certain yet, I’ve got to spend some time trying to make new and exciting builds and see how it works out.

Guards look OP (and will probably get some nerfs before the release), thieves look like more of the same, but with more interesting choices, ele look nerfed in what we know, but they are opening a few interesting builds to counter this.

All hail the new condi S/D acro/trickery/deadly arts trap trickster teef.

Hi there,

Some very important things for all classes when leveling is to upgrade your gear. Since the game scales you to the level of content you are in, if you are a level 30 in level 15 gear, you are only at half potential, even in a level 5 area. It may seem counter intuitive that if your gear is matching the zone you should be fine, but its based on the difference between your theoretical max stats and your current stats. (This is why a level 1 warrior can go into WvW with 30khp and a bunch of damage, that player went and got every upgrade for a level 1, so he was basically a well geared 80 in wvw, without the traits and utilities. This was before the NPE, as you only get 1 skill now at level 1 vs 5 before. )

Now that I’ve covered that, take this time to learn your profession. If you struggle on something try mixing it up, there is no best for everything in this game. Although, generally s/p, d/p and shortbow are good weapons for leveling. (shortbow should often be your secondary, but again, mix it up, there are many many ways to level; just don’t give up)

For utilities, again try them all (in the pvp zone if you have to), there are uses for most of them during leveling. Sometimes a bunch of strong undead aren’t so scary when you lay down some caltrops and range them with a shortbow, or skelk that go invisible, you can put down a smoke field to blind them (even when invisible) and protect yourself from their initial burst (pistol offhand for smokefield). The list goes on. Also remember that dredge can’t be blinded, so don’t get offguard. NPCs with special abilities will have it written in white underneath their health bar.

Now a last thing, which I kind of mentioned. You can go into a pvp zone called heart of the mists, which allows you to be intantly max level (your gear doesn’t affect pvp in this area, only your “pvp build” which you’ll find in the top center of the screen). You can get there by an icon in the top left, opening with the keybind (mine is shift-b) or a portal in lions arch near the WvW portals.

In heart of the mists, you can try all your abilities on npcs that mimic players to get a feel for what each one does. You can try everything (minus 5 traits a heal skill and your racial abilities). So go nuts and see how you enjoy the different aspects of thief in there. You might find something you enjoy and take a reduced version of the build to max level in the open world zones.

Good luck, and have fun. (Also, learn about combo fields and finishers, they are very important to some thief builds and most thieves in any team play)

binidj.5734:

The relevant blog post can be found at: https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/specializations-part-one-a-primer/

From my first read-through three issues immediately cropped up: removal of traitline stat bonuses, (apparent) siloing of traits, and (Necromancer specific) ground-targeting wells.

Removal of Traitline Stat Bonuses
First off let me say that I don’t hate this idea as such, however what I do hate is the proposed implementation. Please, please don’t transfer stat gains to armour, by all means give us a UI attached to Specialisation with sliders (or whatever) to manage our stats but lumping them all (or the majority) into armour sets will actually reduce the ways in which we can tinker with our builds … and that would be a terrible shame.

Siloing Traits
From the blog post it looked as though adept traits could only be placed in adept slots, master in master slots, and grandmaster in grandmaster slots. On a couple of characters I have the current equivalent of putting an adept in my adept slot, another adept in my master slot, and a grandmaster in my grandmaster slot; will this be possible under the new system? If it won’t be possible then, again, we’re actually having flexibility taken away from our builds … and that is a bad thing.

I really like the idea of a character stat allocation page, where you get to place up to 1000 stats however you see fit in intervals of 50 at a time (20 points). This could work for pvp and all other regions of the game. It allows players just as much flexibility with stats as we have now, without tying them to traits (or specializations in hot).

Also, I have really like the flexibility of traits being able to go in any slot. Having three adept traits in a line seems silly, but can make some good builds. I’m so excited for the news in 12 hours, I can hardly bring myself to get on the game now… XD I hope the news doesn’t crush my hopes for this game.

This may sound taboo to say, but this new system looks a lot like the changes they made to world of warcraft talents. It seemed great and all when they released it, even though I was one of the players that liked to make wacky builds. However, I’ve stopped playing that game for years now, mostly because it feels too streamlined. A smooth treadmill.

This may be a step in that direction for gw2. I love the build making system. However, many classes are limited in their choices. I’m actually playing engineer mostly these days due to the immense build diversity. I can make a new build every week and have fun. I really hope A-Net considers the implication of reducing the number of choices we make. If the choices don’t give the same feeling that the current traits give, then I don’t want this change. Currently, it feels like you can adapt to the world by changing a few traits, see a hard champion you want to solo, switch 3-4 traits, and a few utilities, some gear and go to town. Roaming wvw and encounter another player when camp clearing, pull out, drop combat, and switch an essential trait and utility to face this profession. It is fun (would be more fun with build templates), but this is not what we meant if it reduces actual choices.

We’ll see soon enough how the changes will be. I’m very excited to hear about it, but I’m with a few people in saying for the first time in years, I’m considering stopping my time in gw2. If these changes turn into boring obvious choices that don’t allow players to find creative and spontaneous ways of impacting their combat, and the strategies they would employ, I’m out.

Good luck A-Net, this is a big change. But I’ll hold faith for now, since you made this game in the first place that I adore, and I’ve gotten a few people into it as well. For them, traits seem to be nearly impossible to understand, so I can see the reasoning for this change, but don’t take away what makes us veterans love traits.

If by PvE, you mean dungeons, than this build is good. It may not be meta for engineer, but its close enough that you’ll do plenty of damage. Just be sure to rotate between your kits and weapon skills with a priority system. And be aware of knockback if you want to use big old bomb (you should). Elixir gun 4, when candled I think is the highest priority, after you have gotten the boss to 25 vulnerability. Also, I’d switch to rifle, but its not necessary. Especially if you plan on pugging mostly, having some more might may be more useful than slightly more damage.

Good to know haven’t lost my mind. I felt like the skill points used to show up, but with all the kitten I smoke. I thought I had just imagined it…

Chris McSwag.4683:

Sylvari, as they are a backstabbing kind of race that can’t be trusted

Here Here!

I say that when the expansion is released, Humans, Asura, Norn and Charr, slaughter the remaining sylvari. An enemy I can handle, but a backstabbing ally; that is when you are really in trouble. Down with the trees! Down with Trahearn!

I am glad this thread was created, as I learned that GW2 supports 3D and multi monitors. Awesome! I hope they fix this. I will be keeping on eye on the progress and when I get my new computer I may consider getting a 3D headgear.

DarkSyze.8627:

I will say again for the last time: the main problem is in the traits: not only Engineer profession but including the other professions that are not challenging.

Example: if you want to make adjustment to a fast car; changing the car parts-wheels will not fix it. But their engines: the main part of the car.

The traits are the engines-the main parts for the professions. Weapons, sigil, runes etc… are the car parts.

That is why i suggested for the traits of the not challenging professions to be adjusted: they are too powerful!

So why not make adjustments-fix to the engines:traits?

Would that not be a wise thing to do?

I do not understand why this is being ignored??

This guy is smart, but I think the intention is to nerf all engineer builds that use supply crate. As well as the turrets. If not…

I’m using a build for ranked (although my mmr is low… due to some tie trying out memser) that uses AED. It is a variant of my shotgun ninja build. Regardless, the heal is nice. The change I would implement after a lot of thought, is to make it remove conditions when it heals, regardless of if you died. Losing healing turret, is losing some of the only condition removal engineers have… I think if it removed condtions after 5 seconds, you’d see it get used more. The cast time seems likee a good drawback for opponents, although I’d be happy with an instant cast. But slowly dying to conditions (hello incendiary powder) is frustrating enough to not use this heal. Although the fun part of this heal is spending much of the match fighting at 20% hp. XD Just waiting for the right moment to pop it.

Posted in the PVP forum. I guess its confirmed you aren’t going to be looking at how this affects pve. I still don’t even think turret are overpowered in pvp… I don’t remmeber a game I lost where I thought: “kitten that turret engineer”. It is a low skill build that gives poor results.

Funny enough, I tried getting into mesmer pvp (I sucked), and my mmr dropped like a sandbag. (ya I probably should of stopped doing ranked) But I am now encountering more turret engineers. They are so easy to play against… This reminds me of people complaining about Moa. The skill has good counterplay (long cast time, it grants the opponent a very good evasion skill and leap skill, and if you choose some decent damage skills), but new players facing this crumble. I (as a giant newbie mesmer player) cast Moa on many noobs once my mmr brought me to opponents my level, and twice the enemy would just type “lol” and stand there until I killed them. And then start complaining about it in map chat… Moa is a slight inconvenience in truth, which is why so many players run mass invisibility, since the benefits are much greater. I’m glad an announcement didn’t come out, Moa now makes you immune to conditions and critical hits. There “balanced”….

Please consider first making turrets vulnerable to crits before making them take condition damage. A single nerf may be enough. The build is only good against bad players (an abundance of them, I’ll give you that, but pvp isn’t supposed to be the most casual thing in this game) Overcoming enemy builds is part of the fun.

Look back to the healing signet nerf (one that caused about as much drama). You removed 20hp/sec from it, and it is now balanced. In fact, some warrior builds aren’t viable anymore due to such a small change. Be careful with nerfs, you don’t want to make the gamee boring, so players who still keyboard turn can defeat their enemies. Although, its obvious that at the lowest skill level, turrets are overpowered, and some nerfs would be nice to help them, but I’d love to see just one tournament with a single turret engineer winning before we call in for nerfs. The build is close to being viable, and in actuality has some skill to it (althogh I don’t enjoy it), if you want to play it at the highest level, you can’t just afk on a point. There is a video exemplifying this point on the engineer forums “how to play turret engineer”. And the players simply alt tabs after setting up his turrets. Guess what? He lost. Of course, if all you do is afk, you are failing your team. Funny enough, a silly thief shows up trying to 1v1 the turret engineer and gets killed. Probably went over to the forums after to complain, or maybe he just wanted to check his luck, now that his team had secured the rest of the map. Either way, sure this build is good for farming leaderboards, since so many players are not very good. (I’m all the time realizing what a noob I am, even after 2 years of playing pvp weekly) Its fun to better yourself, and overcome obstacles. Don’t make this meta of only celestial with thief solidified. Diversity, keeps the game fresh, and thats what this build is doing for me. Fighting turrets has been fun, and I feel confident against them now.

Just yesterday, I was solo rushing lord, and a turret engineer who had been killed came to defend. I was right next to lord, but once he threw down his rocket turret, I just turned around and ran out. As soon as he left, I went back in a killed the lord. The consequence was a turret engineer on some point without his rocket turret for 50 seconds, and us wining the game. He could of stayed there, but it still would of cost his team the game. Turret builds face heavy mobility issues, some have even started including kits into their builds to help alleviate their weaknesses. Let the meta grow!

Also, don’t nerf turrets in pve. I’ll miss them during defend events. And Toxic spore distraction thumper.

Good day. And I hope saying that a lot of players are bad, myself included is not offensive, but I think its the truth. People say this game has little skill, but I seem to find endless room to grow. (or else I wouldn’t be playing this game for so long)

Bumping as this is an extremely underused skill and was recently buffed to include a daze on the tool belt skill. However, the actual buff never went through, only a tool tip for a buff and an icon appearing on your enemies when you cast it, but no actual daze.

I’m going to edit the tittle to include the word bug, since even in the bug forum people seem to do that. Even if it takes months, I want A-net aware of this issue, so a fix can be implemented.

Also, I guess no one can comment or confirm, since no one uses the skill battering ram. I’m using it in a ranked static discharge build, but the skill not dazing was a big disappointment. Still as fun as it was before the “buff” to the skill.

Hi there,

In case this hasn’t been brought up, but the daze from launch personal battering ram does not actually apply. The daze icon shows up, but npcs or players can continue to use abilities. It does not interrupt or daze at all.

Thank you.

Rangers generally wreck engineers of equal skill. For an engineer, it is one of our hardest matchups (condi ranger). However, due to the nature of conquest, and the fact that this game is 5v5 in pvp. (roaming is another matter) Engineers can usually overcome their weakness to condi ranger, or their vulnerability to zerker rangers fairly easily. It all comes down to rotations in pvp. You shouldnt be trying to 1v1 a condi ranger as a engineer, unless you built some wacky anti-ranger build.

I’m working on a non-static discharge damage build with engineer that should give me more of a chance against condi rangers. It is very important to keep you distance from rangers who play condi, and very important to los and close the distance on zerker rangers.

Also, HGH does okay against condi rangers (due to the numerous conditon removals). It is probably the closest to meta engineer build that can stand toe to toe with condition rangers.

If you are having trouble against engineers as a ranger, either they are way better players than you, or have specialized to counter you.

This game (like many of its genre), it is very important to understand the other classes, so you can properly react to them. So try engineer is its giving you trouble. You can have a max level engineer for pvp in about 2-5 minutes. You’ll cry the first time a ranger entangles you when you weren’t expecting it, and procedes to kill you in less than 10 seconds with conditions. When moments earlier you felt super powerful against thieves, warriors, elementalists and guardians. Suddenly, you can’t even move before you die. (This is when ranger bait out your condition removal before landing a entangle)

Good Luck.

PEOPLE!!!! A-Net is about to nerf turrets, meaning there will soon be even more engineers wearing hobosacks. This is all part of their master plan….MUHAHAAHAHAHAAHHA

Long live the hobosacks!

[IMG]http://i57.tinypic.com/2emfr02.jpg[/IMG]

I have been giving it more thought, and I agree with some others here that conditions affecting them will remove them from 95% of the situations I use them for in pve. With already being underused, this would make them nearly-useless (more so than now). So please, if you do decide to go ahead with this in pvp, don’t let the condition change carry over to pve.

Also, its funny, but I hadn’t considered the effect this will have on the elite supply drop. All my builds, except for HGH, run supply drop. Which means, that I’ll be getting nerfed against builds that already gave me trouble (condition necros, condition rangers). I think consider implementing a first change to allow turrets to be crit before implementing the two changes simultaneously. This was you can see how effective critting turrets is, before nerfing engies abilities to survive a condition class. (although probably a minor nerf in all honesty) While allowing players who use turrets in pve to continue to do so, until you decide if implementing another change is needed.

I actually like the more laid back feeling of eotm. Farming weak uplevels is not my idea of fun. But its still cool that people have the option. I just don’t want a-net to make further changes to encourage only max levels in eotm. Also, I dont get people who play solo defense of the key trait points. (I just went in trying to get some traits for a new character (already 80 though)) And this one ranger was defending against our team of 5 for the last 20 minutes of the match. I’m sure he felt good having prevented us from getting our traits, but I can’t grasp why. I mean he sat in a treb blasting the front gate, until the uplevels eventually ran for it, and I was left alone and had to give up for another time. I hope they fix wvw queue times if that was his reasoning, but there’s not much need for defense in the last few minutes of an eotm match. I mean, he didn’t even come out to face me 1v1 at the end. As I was hoping we could fight it out. I guess he was having fun guarding objectives. Good life lesson to work on your goals, but it seems like a random goal. (defend against players trying to unlock traits!) He could’ve gone to any other objective, but the three.

Regardless, I know he wasn’t at fault, and I will be super happy once the trait revamp is reverted.

I would be down for illusions to last 8-10 seconds, but be invulnerable. (obviously not phantasms) This would greatly help mesmer in areas where aoe cleave is a big problem for clone generation. Also, giving the clones a time limit would encourage players to use their clones, which is an important part of playing mesmer.

Maybe, just make them invulnerable for 2 seconds, but no time limit.

Either way, this idea has my approval. For what its worth.

Ya, I’m also worried about pve. Its nice that my turrets can face some situations that I can’t. (due to limited condition removal on the engineer) I can place turrets in areas of static pulsing conditions and know that they will continue to “stay in the fight” through my much needed pulling out. I hope they consider this, but I’ve already mentioned it in the official thread. I like the change for pvp, but for pve, being immune to conditions is a big help for turret viability.

I’m not sure of the approach, but I’d love for some subtle buff to zerker engineer. Maybe increase the distance of rocket boots. (allowing a more guaranteed reset for a zerker with rocket boots) Or increase slightly (10%) the damage of static discharge. I can’t think of much else that wouldn’t affect other builds. I just want to play zerker engineer at the highest level. (I play zerker on every class pretty much, as I love burst)

Nice change. This removes some of the hard counters that have frustrated some players in regards to turrets. At least, aoe cleave will bring them down even faster, and zerker rangers will now hard counter turrets (more than before). Same with zerker staff elementalist. Truly a good idea to buff the less represented classes in facing what some consider a plague spec. This might even affect the meta, in unorganized teams, XD. Either way, I’m not looking forward to more zerker rangers (should they appear), as they are in general good against engineers.

The only thing is, I wish the change to turrets being affected by conditions was pvp only. I sometimes use turrets in pve in areas where conditions would kill me, allowing me to continue some pressure. (This change prevents that strategy)

Anyway, thanks for the information Josh. I look forward to seeing where it leads.

I love these threads…. “I beat turret engies….nerf plz” For one, you guys made a lot of mistakes that game and still won.

I’m going to continue to beat down turret engies assuming they are really in over abundance again. (I hadn’t seen many this last week)

Nothing to see here. I hope A-Net watches this, along with the rest of the “proof” that turrets are overpowered. I hope they don’t nerf them as bad a some other classes have taken it. I like to use turrets for doing some heart missions and events.

Edit: The changes have been posted. Overall I think its good change, but I hope they don’t bring it over to pve, although I doubt they will make the separation for this change.

Well ranger is very different from elementalist.

Elementalist focuses on combining different attunements to create powerful combos. A series of rapid attacks that combine into something destructive. The exception is pve staff, as you end up camping fire attument. It gets easier with practice, and zerker gear with a staff weapon is actually very easy to play. (and you can grow a lot as a player with it too, as survival for the weapon is more complicated.

Moving onto ranger, ranger is about how you build your character. They have a lot of flexibility, and some really cool weapons, but they are all pretty straightforward. The challenge for ranger comes from planning more than actual combat, however there are still many tricks to uncover from playing. They are more defensive by nature, and have good mobility (if build right). You can take a ranger with a longbow to max level and still not learn much about the game, so I advvise you try diffrent weapons.

Something a lot of people complain about with ranger, is actually the same thing that allows any weapon or any profession to do open world. NPCs have to stop moving to attack. This means that if you circle npcs, they generally cant hit you, some attacks can get to you, and you’ll have to dodge, but mostly learning how to deal with the A.I. in this game is baseline. Once you do, ele or any profession is easy.

Play what you like best, and try a few of the professions in heart of the mists (there is a portal to it in lions arch) Elementalist is very fun, but so are many professions in this game. No one class is perfect, and you just have to choose your poison. For elementalist, its being squishy by nature, and having more complicated rotations for max damage (except staff). For the ranger, your weakness is reliance on your pet (which is sometimes an advantage) also your weapons aren’t very flexible so careful planing of weapons and utilities is very important. (Again unless you are just doing heart missions, etc. in which case anything works)

Good luck choosing a main.

I’m really happy with the constructive posts!

Its very nice of so many of you to write up about the mesmer.

The thing is, I can never commit to playing a character if its not called “Loboling”. It is very silly, and each max level character I’ve had to rename when I’m done with him, to start a new Loboling. I tried to get away with it on my mesmer, by calling her Lobolings, and while funny, I miss playing a male human loboling character…

I’m going to continue to play around with the mesmer in pvp, and with my engineer. If I get tired of engineer, I think mesmer would be a very fun class to learn. It seems to have a lot of useful abilities baked into the class. (invul, burst, interrupt, some condi) Mesmer are a very cool class, and possibly the hardest profession to master. I thought engineer was hard, but you can at least build tanky to learn the ropes, doing so with mesmer is mostly pointless it seems.

Honestly, I wish I could move to mesmer (just for something new), but I know at some point I’ll want to play something that can take a few more hits. So for now, I’m more likely to take my engineer into the expansion.

I wish they would release all the info on specilizations now, so if there is anything relevant to my decision making, I could avoid investing hundreds of skill points and gold into a character I wont ever play. (thank you NPE)

Anyway, thanks again everyone. If I start to get more into mesmer, I’ll probably make some thread about how awesome they are. I already find them really cool, but they feel a little too niche for a main. Hopefully the expansion brings some more flexibility in their playstyles.

Ya, its funny most characters I try and do map completion as low level as possible, to reduce the fees from waypoints. But Mesmer might be the first I consider getting to max level before progressing with map completion.

Thanks for the help, I’m going to try a build in pvp with traveler runes, just to get a feel for how it suits mesmer.

So far, I’m still leaning towards engineer, but I find the mesmer fun, but I’m not seeing all the build diversity. It seems you can play shatter (direct/condi), or focus on keeping phantasm up while staying alive. Are there more playstyles I’m not aware of?

On the engineer to name a few: I can build a burst static discharge build (which in itself has a lot of variety); go focus on lobbing grandees and playing with a few different weapons (kits) as a damage dealer; I can drop bombs at my feet and turn into a area controller; I can play a medkit healer, where I can throw a bunch of medkits on a point and each heals for 2.5k (I can have about 12 up, when camping a point); I can play a decapper, and force my opponents to increase their numbers at the point I’m at, or lose it; And there are more, (bomb healer, turret camper, reflection spammer, HGH, Mine burst) There may be more, but I cant think of it.

I realize how little I know about the mesmer, but its hard to imagine any class with as much build diversity as the engineer. So where do mesmer’s truly stand?

Thanks again.

We’ll I had a lot of fun playing mesmer. The burst that a shatter mesmer can put out is insane. I only really played sw/t gs shatter, as I wanted to get to a skill level where I felt I could contribute. It got very fun, but in the end I went back to my engineer and still felt more powerful. I’m sure a lot of that has to do with having played engineer for years and mesmer for days… XD But I can finally see some of the potential.

The mobility is poor, but often people only start to run after they felt one of your burst cycles, and they have 10% hp left. You can just blink and finish them off easy enough. So for chase potential it felt good.

I tried making good use of portal and only succeeded once. Allowing me to destroy another mesmer by teleporting around him over and over. But I still never found a good team use in solo queue.

I’m going to put some more time into mesmser and see how comfortable I can get. I want to feel at least as powerful as my no kit, no condi removal burst engineer. (I call him the shotgun ninja) Since that build has a lot of weaknesses, I know a meta mes build should out preform it.

Thanks again for the help, and I’m still looking to learn more about the mesmer, so if anyone has some information on things you’ve learned playing a mesmer, let me know.

Xyonon.3987:

Keep in mind that the damage per illusion gets reduced for every additional illusion you’re about to shatter with F1. But you always count as a single illusion wich is a huge damage increase for this weak skill.

Could you clarify what you mean?

I’m curious about mes, and am currently trying to better understand shatter.

Thanks for bringing this to the engineer forum. I really hope they go light with the nerfs.

Here are what I think would be fair:
-Reduce turret health per second from 5%/3sec to 5%/5sec. This nerfs their healing by about 40%.
-Reduce the health of thumper turret by 10%.

Those two should be enough, but if A-net is beant on removing turrets from any play outside of hotjoin, they can also make turrets (only in pvp) take 5%/sec damage when the engineer is farther than 1500 range. So if a turet enginner leaves his point, his turrets will die in 25 seconds. Slowly getting weaker, allowing another player to come in and destroy them even earlier. This would have to only be in pvp!! Even still, this just makes turret engineers less skill based, and I don’t like it. The first two nerfs I mentioned should be plenty to allow some builds that currently can’t 1v1 a turret engineer have an easier time taking out the rocket turret, so they can 1v1. And bombarding the point will even kill the thumper quickly.

In the end, I don’t really agree with nerfing turrets, but if its happening that is how I’d do it.

I don’t play turrets, but I like having them in the game. They spice up the meta, and force me to think a bit more when facing an enemy turret, or trying to make use of our teams turret player.

I’ve heard and seen enginner turret premades, if that is the source of their issue, then they could consider that experimental turrets buffs dont stack form multiple turrets. (Aka, a thumper will give protection in its area, and any others will be put on hold until that one is destroyed.) This would force turret groups to spread their turrets out more, which makes them more vulnerable to being picked off.

Thanks Serbent.

I’m looking forward to trying the mesmer in heart of the mists to see if I can get a good rotation going. (killing the profession npcs) I want to like the mesmer, as I’ve never found a class in this game that sits right with me for long. I always miss something from another class. The elementalist, ranger and engineer offered enough build diversity to keep me playing for a long time, and I started with thief (which was perfect since they lack some diversity, but teach you a lot of fundamentals of the game)

I’ll come back to this thread when I finish trying out a few builds on the mesmer.

Thanks again, and have a great week-end everyone.

Do mesmers have no abilities or builds that allow them to quickly take out weaker npcs?

Maybe group them up and burst them down in groups? Something to allow fluid play for map completion.

I wonder if norn mesmers feel their racial elites help with their mobility problems, or if they are simply non viable. I am hoping to play as a human male, but I may consider switching. Also, for mobility, I’m less frustrated with moving slowly than I am with having weakened enemies get away from me before I can finish them off. (the old GS/SwF medi guard was stupid easy to run from, if you knew how to counter the build)

Ross Biddle.2367:

First pro tip: Level your mesmer with PvP tomes, or in an EOTM kTrain. Once 80 you can start playing the mesmer game.

I’ll let someone else take over the rest.

Thank you for your response, but is the mesmer game vastly different at max level?

Ex: my fresh air elementalist doesn’t even exist at low level, and yet its my favorite build.

Also, I hear some people call mesmer’s the class with the most build diversity. But I’ve always thought engineer had the most build diversity.

I love playing bursty classes, that can at times, switch it up and play very different playstyles.

So, map completion on a mesmer is about as slow as possible is what you are saying?

I’ve heard mesmers get better at max level, but I guess not to the extent where they can grind mobs as well as a thief or engineer. (engineer really feels like my favorite class for map completion) As for pvp, I’m going to spend some time this week-end trying some meta builds and see if its any better than last year when I tried mesmer. I have gotten a lot better at the game, so maybe that will help.

I just want a class that feels flexible, while not giving up all mobility (or chase potential), that can map completion ok (I’ve never finished in 2 years now), and has some fun burst builds in pvp. (and viable)

I know mesmers can burst well, and they seem a little faster than a guardian at catching other players. Hopefully they aren’t as boring as Ranger for map completion (way too faceroll), and their pvp burst is viable at higher level pvp.

Thanks again.