Guild Wars 2

Quadox.7834:

Regarding thieves -snip-

Regarding thieves, they simply need to tone down thief, NOT buff Mesmer. We are mostly balanced against other classes. Dps guard counters us (and a few other builds by some professions), but it does not hard-counter us which is an entirely different thing.

You know it’s bad when the PvP Specialist has to come go to a profession sub-forum… btw, why haven’t we gotten profession sub forum specialists yet?!

Best wishes to the Necros. As a Mesmer main, I know how our classes have constantly been maligned by bad mechanics, bugs and non-nonsensical traits combinations.

Ross Biddle.2367:

kitten y shout out to the upcoming kshot warrior too

gl with all the reflects I’ll be running with mirror heal, dodges, blink and arcane thievery.

They definitely were listening to some things. When I saw Mistrust during the live stream, I literally screamed, because that was a direct take away from the forums. The same goes for Confusing Combatants. For lack of a better term however, there seems to be some confusion about Confusing Combatants. Do illusions/Mesmer cause confusion on crit or do we cause confusion when illusions/Mesmer are critically hit by enemies?

Anyway, yes I’m very impressed with Anet and the direction they have taken Mesmer in pvp. This has definitely improved my confidence, but that’s not saying much considering I’ve been at rock bottom for such a long time. This is simply giving credit where credit is due.

First off, I think it’s a bit disingenuous to say this trait is a staple in every shatter build considering double ranged shatter mesmers tend to take elasticity. And even some shatter mes taking torch choose to take elasticity as well. That being said, there’s no denying that invigoration increases shatter efficiency by a ton, and I agree that it should be incorporated somewhere.

My suggestion is to move phantasmal haste into the inspiration line and place invigoration there in its place. There’s definitely room for reorganization in the inspiration line…

Thanks a lot for this. I imagine the phantasm will be sparse. There’s a severe lack of cohesiveness for phantasms considering their traits are spread so thin across Domination, Dueling, Inspiration and Illusions…

Anyway, thanks again for this write up, and I look forward to seeing you fill the rest out. Great observations!

Ross Biddle.2367:

If you’ve invoked the wrath of ChaosA, you know you’ve blown it.

Also gotta say, that’s the softed rebuke in the history of rebukes. It’s like a cloud floated in and bumped into this guy. If Chaos were a pokemon, he’d be Jigglypuff. GG

I literally thought the same thing. If you’ve somehow gotten under Chaos’ skin, you must be pretty awful tbh. Regardless, Jigglypuff’s attack was super effective.

Countless great thoughts in this video…! See what I did there? XD

• I’ll be right there with you looking for a way to keep Signets in play. Your suggestion is very solid theory craft though.
• I’m right there with you on the PU buff… I’m still a bit shocked.
• Your Mimic idea is pretty glorious, but Mimic would need it’s own CD regardless of which utility you mimic.

Xaylin.1860:

MailMail.6534:

Feedback is a lot less reliable as it is not ground targeted, making it more difficult to use effectively. Also, you’re forgetting that Null Field is a valuable boon rip.

I wouldn’t say less reliable. It just works differently.

Regarding Null Field, you are still handing out 50% of its mechanic to other Glamours.

NullField would still have a place over other glamours in certain builds. I don’t know why this is a horrible thing outside of it being based on just principal. There’s many times where I would take Null Field over Feedback. Obviously, the same goes for Veil.

apharma.3741:

I’m just disappointed that the title isn’t “Inspiration – a lack of” or something like that.

+1 Change title or gtfo

Cupcake elite is OP.

I’m completely drenched.

Xaylin.1860:

MailMail.6534:

Restorative Illusions: Merge with SC. In place of it would be Glamorous Recovery which would pulse conditions into boons each second an ally is inside of a glamour.

Big no no to Glamorous Recovery.

• Makes Nullfield irrelevant because Feedback will be better in most situations.
• Takes a big dump on Wells.

Feedback is a lot less reliable as it is not ground targeted, making it more difficult to use effectively. Also, you’re forgetting that Null Field is a valuable boon rip.

MINOR
Protected Phantasms : increase distortion to 1.5s and get rid of the ridiculous ICD.
Phantasmal Healing : make the healing increase AOE for allies.

ADEPT
Vigorous Revelation: Needs to be merged into Bountiful Disillusionment to make it more competitive with its interrupt/stealth counterparts. In it’s place, create a clone death trait. Either one that gives AOE vigor/swiftness or one that fills X% of clone health. Refer to Sticker, mine and others’ posts here https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/pvp/Clone-Death-Overhaul/first#post5010404

MASTER
Compounding Celerity: Scrap. Replace with Illusionary Inspiration and make its CD 30s instead of 45.
Restorative Illusions: Merge with SC. In place of it would be Glamorous Recovery which would pulse conditions into boons each second an ally is inside of a glamour.

GRANDMASTER
Illusive Illusions: Phantasms are given Aegies/Resistance every x amount of seconds. Balance the recharge as needed. This would be absolutely huge for phantasm builds.
Temporal Enchantment: Add pulsing healing.

These changes would definitely make Inspiration the trait line for phantasm builds as it would immensely boost their sustain. In fact, it would be a GREAT supportive tree line for shatter builds as your clones would survive longer and have a higher chance of not being AOEed to death.

And besides buffing phantasms, you could go the route of really supporting your team using heals, condition clears or boon gifting. Significant buff to glamours as support. Come on Anet, take my ideas. You don’t have to pay me. Consider it a freebie on me!

Shattered concentration is instantly a grand master trait worthy of taking with IP being baseline now. I think the biggest drawback is that shatters need to hit before clearing conditions right? But besides that, I think it’s pretty decent now. It would be more impressive if they combined it with Restorative Illusions like I suggested. Sometimes they read our forums, and other times they don’t…

On the plus side, Mistrust is a DIRECT nod to them reading out suggestions as I distinctly remember discussion of a confusion on interrupt trait being needed.

Back on topic, the tree is still somewhat underwhelming, but definitely better than before. There’s still some work that could be done to make Mesmer more supportive in an effective way. I’ll go over some suggestions for improvements in my next post.

phys.7689:

how is generating clones passive when it requires actively using/managing endurance/weaponskill cool downs.

arent all attrition tank builds based around doing defensive actions while applying annoying slow dots/dps over time?
why is it cheesy for mesmer but aok for necros, theives, guardians, rangers.

The underlined frames your argument in a really unproductive way tbh. I’d like to refrain from using the word “cheesy”. AI builds are inherently more passive than other builds. This is fact. Some classes are more/less dependent on AI with varying functions. Basically, bringing up the other classes is a moot point imo.

But to take on your opinion on how “active” clone death builds are, the only thing you’re managing is your endurance bar. And I think the main critique is that no matter what your actions are, you get a “win-win” situation by summoning clones. Either they take the dmg or kill the clones and take damage. Looking at it from the outside, there’s nothing to really manage for the person in a win-win situation, right??

Listen, as anyone on these forums can attest to, I’ve been the biggest proponent of clone death builds! That being said, I don’t think this is the biggest grievance ever… We can focus our energies or correcting the bigger underlying issue related to these clone death traits which is… clone survivability.

I just had another idea for what they could do buff clone survivability in the Inspiration trait line in place of the much maligned Compounding Celerity:

Ethereal Dissipation: When clones are killed, remaining clones gain x% of their total health. ICD?

You’d have to be pretty delicate with the numbers though. I think the point I want to reiterate is that we need a way to balance our counter of massive AOE dmg. No, we shouldn’t be able to overcome it as every class should have counters, but if we trait for it, we should be able to at least not be so severely impacted by it.

I like your ideas on healing and condi removal on clone death, but I think such a trait would give players an incentive to let their clones die which is NOT the direction the devs want to take Mesmer in moving forward. Whether complaints against clone death builds are warranted or not (check out my sig, I don’t think it’s an OP spec in the least bit as it has some glaring weaknesses) I don’t necessarily disagree with this change.

And for my fellow Mesmers touting how useful it is to “punish players who are mindlessly cleaving clones”, this is completely unavoidable in conquest with small points and isn’t a well thought-out critique or idea.

Thanks for the shout out, Sticker. My post from the Mesmer forums:

I can see why they would want to get rid of the clone death traits due to wanting Mesmers to use their main mechanic more often and not rely on passive game play. I get it, and I somewhat agree even though the effectiveness of one of my favorite builds will die out.

The only issue I take with this is the fact that clones must be able to survive in order to do dmg. This includes phantasms and the path a clone must take when commanded to shatter. No class suffers more from AOE pressure than ours. AOE guts our dmg significantly, and this is a problem in pvp modes.

SUGGESTION
Keep out the offensive clone death traits. Combine Compounding Celerity & Vigorous Revelation for a new trait:
Vigorous Dissipation - Clones apply Vigor (2s) and Swiftness (3s) to nearby allies when they are killed. # of Targets – 5. Radius – 240.

Before, clone death traits would give you an incentive to actually let your clones die. I think going a bit more supportive instead of offensive would be more in line with their ideals and give players less of an incentive to let them die. At the same time, it does cover a major weakness to the Mesmer class by giving you more dodges and the ability to escape a sticky situation.

Afterwards, they can just add vigor onto all shatters with Bountiful Disillusionment, making it even more on par with the boon monsters it’s stealth/interrupt counterparts, PU & CI. Then, they can have another chance at making a more than decent Inspiration trait. How many more chances is it going to take, idk, but I’m willing to give them as many as they need…

Thoughts?

messiah.1908:

MailMail.6534:

SUGGESTION
Keep out the offensive clone death traits. Combine Compounding Celerity & Vigorous Revelation for a new trait:
Vigorous Dissipation - Clones apply Vigor (2s) and Swiftness (3s) to nearby allies when they are killed. # of Targets – 5. Radius – 240.
Thoughts?

vigor will bring up your endurance after 5 sec (for 1 dodge) its 5 sec you are alone and easy target to die
i say maybe each clone die will bring back 10% endurance so combine with regular endurance refill if 3 clones get killed you have 1 more dodge to create new one
now this must be clone killed and not replaced by new clone

Just to reiterate the point I’m trying to make, the purpose of this trait wouldn’t be to give mesmers an incentive to let their clones die. You want to shatter them and make sure they make it to their target. The trait is simply to slightly offset the imbalance that AOE dmg has against our class by adding some survivability and mobility. With DE and weapon CDs, clones are easy to generate, which is why clone death traits are frowned upon in the first place for being “easy” and “passive”.

While your percentage idea is nice, I think actually giving vigor adds more syngery with other traits considering it’s a boon. And I think it’s important that the trait be AOE for team support.

I can see why they would want to get rid of the clone death traits due to wanting Mesmers to use their main mechanic more often and not rely on passive game play. I get it, and I somewhat agree even though the effectiveness of one of my favorite builds will die out.

The only issue I take with this is the fact that clones must be able to survive in order to do dmg. This includes phantasms and the path a clone must take when commanded to shatter. No class suffers more from AOE pressure than ours. AOE guts our dmg significantly, and this is a problem in pvp modes.

SUGGESTION
Keep out the offensive clone death traits. Combine Compounding Celerity & Vigorous Revelation for a new trait:
Vigorous Dissipation - Clones apply Vigor (2s) and Swiftness (3s) to nearby allies when they are killed. # of Targets – 5. Radius – 240.

Before, clone death traits would give you an incentive to actually let your clones die. I think going a bit more supportive instead of offensive would be more in line with their ideals and give players less of an incentive to let them die. At the same time, it does cover a major weakness to the Mesmer class by giving you more dodges and the ability to escape a sticky situation.

Afterwards, they can just add vigor onto all shatters with Bountiful Disillusionment, making it even more on par with the boon monsters it’s stealth/interrupt counterparts, PU & CI. Then, they can have another chance at making a more than decent Inspiration trait. How many more chances is it going to take, idk, but I’m willing to give them as many as they need…

Thoughts?

I found it only to be helpful when paired with Medic’s Feedback, NullField Mercy Runes, PU and Temporal Enchantment. Troll Rezbot Mesmer!!

Velimere.7685:

Levetty.1279:

I am perfectly willing to say now with 100% confidence of being right that Temporal Enchanter is useless and nobody will bring Blinding befuddlement over the other two GMs in illusion.

Quoted for truth.

I think we’re forgetting that Blinding Befuddlement also increases confusion duration. Here’s where I see Blinding Befuddlement being decently strong:
Dueling: Phantasmal Fury – Blinding Dissipation – Mistrust
Chaos: Illusionary Defense – Chaotic Dampening – Chaotic Interruption
Illusions: Persistence of Memory – Malicious Sorcery/Sum of All Fears – Blinding Befuddlement
Scepter/Pistol+Staff with Decoy/Blink/MoD

You have a lot of confusion provided by these traits. Chaos armor uptime is high and proccing confusion/blind/protection. Interrupts are proccing confusion and sometimes blind +moar confusion. Illusions crit confusion/bleeding. You either get 5 stacks of torment every 6s on block or a long lasting torment on every 5 stacks of confusion (depending on how Sum of All Fears actually works). You also have the AOE blind on shatter for emergency situations which will cause confusion.

The build would be pretty stream lined into focusing solely on confusion for the most part, but I see it being strong due to the duration and stacks you can unload in several different ways. It still competes with 2 otherwise strong gm traits but I think we’re underrating it’s potential due to previous perceptions despite other traits being added that actually give this trait a buff.

Ross Biddle.2367:

MailMail.6534:

Also worth noting is how incredibly strong the Minor line is in Dueling. Like omg. Vigor is so important, but it’ll be a hard choice if you’re going for a condi build.

All Minors are inherent to a trait line. Adept + are your picks.

:O Shut the front door ok I feel silly. It just makes the dueling tree that much more powerful!

Literally. They put the signet trait in a 100% power based tree. That makes no sense considering signet builds are more condi based.

I’ll have my thoughts soon!! The lack of Debilitating Dissipation is a HUGE hit combined with the fierce competition between traits within the minor and adept categories in the Dueling tree. It’s not looking good for Signets…

Also worth noting is how incredibly strong the Minor line is in Dueling. Like omg. Vigor is so important, but it’ll be a hard choice if you’re going for a condi build.

Clone death builds will be no more, but I’m not as sad to see the lack of synergy in phantasm builds.

On the plus side, it appears like FINALLY our class mechanic is a hallmark of our class. We finally will see different ways to shatter effectively. Overall, this seems to be a positive change of direction in terms of the identity of the Mesmer class. Control and Shatters!

Looking at some of these traits, I can see the nerf hammer already. Let’s not get too excited! lol My hope is that our buffs will simply pale in comparison to the buffs of the other professions.

I see a lot of potential for build variety in pvp. Interrupt/Lockdown will become the top meta build. Classic shatter will be no more since its defining trait was IP. Depending on how accepting the meta is of conditions, Torment/Confusion will be much more deadlier on Mesmer.

START THE THEORY CRAFTING NOW!

:)

There’s probably more room to speculate about Chronomancer with all the new information rapidly coming out these last few days.

I’m going to go out on a limb and say that this will be the new mandatory trait tree to go into for Interrupt builds considering it will most likely include the condition, Slow. Maybe pulsing fields with off-hand shield. Chrono-Chaos-Dueling will definitely be something to watch for. Now if only they buffed Furious Interruption to give 5s of fury in order to compensate for the furious part of the gm trait.

I’m also hoping to get a rework of Disrupter’s Sustainment, but I won’t hold my breath for that one…

Wow, the negativity expressed by the OP in this thread is palpable… uncomfortable even! I don’t know what type of reaction you expect from your fellow Mesmers in this thread…

I’ll be positive and just give my opinion on some theory crafting stuff related to MtD since I consider myself pretty experienced with the play-style. Note, the following is just speculation. Keep in mind that gms could be completely changed and/or merged or what. We really don’t know. Anyway, here are some cool ideas for making MtD more interesting and viable:

• Domination: Rending Shatter/Crippling – Shattered Concentration – Power Block would give some nice synergy to the entire idea of MtD being a soft lockdown build. Yes, PB is still utterly useless against thieves, and needs a rework, but it’s not the worst thing ever against others classes.
• Inspiration: Glamour Mastery – Temporal Enchantment/Scepter – Shattered Conditions umm Can you say HELLO to Support MtD! Take yourself Time Warp, Null Field, Portal and Decoy for your utilities, and you’ve got an extremely supportive and mobile Mesmer that can also take dish out some good condi dmg and condi clears as well as turn the tide of team fights with TW.
• Chaos: Debilitating Dissipation – Staff – PU This would be so nasty it just wouldn’t even be fair. lol
• Chaos: DD – Bountiful Interruption – Bountiful Disllusionment = Cele MtD with Harmonious Mantras for the 3rd charge on MoD. Yummy.
• Chaos: DD – Staff/BI – Chaotic Interruption the immob isn’t long enough to completely diminish your torment dmg, but long enough to land a shatter in the first place, which is typically harder on MtD than on power.

And having Furious Interrupt wouldn’t be so bad at all in all these specs. It would definitely make Scepter not so awful every 15s. lol

Fair opinion. I just mostly took gripe with this quote, which didn’t reflect on my experiences.

Also, it’s not really fun for the two solo players being matched with 4 people in a party, such teams will usually ignore their 5th player.

I think in an ideal world, it makes sense to have separate queues. Unfortunately, we’re still trying to get pvp to an ideal place.

On the contrary, @Laraley. I can say with confidence that most premades I’ve been queued with don’t ignore me. The experience is better than if I were just with a group of pugs whom aren’t typically interested in any form of communication.

Whenever I’m with a group, the first thing I say is “wassup -insert guild name-. I’m running -insert build & ammy-. Tell me what role you’d like me to fill for your team.” and things usually go well for the most part.

Evan Lesh.3295:

Looking at your game history over the last few days, there were only two games you lost where the enemy team had a larger party than was on your team.

Remember that when you solo queue, the rest of YOUR team could be in a party, and you were paired with an equal opposing team. Also, checking for players that queued together by attempting a party invite will at best reveal they are paired with a single other person. Players could have even partied after joining a match.

LOL this truth tea is bitter to sip on. I love when the devs come in here with data and rekt people who give unwarranted complaints.

While this is sometimes an issue, I agree that unranked is for casual play whether you have a team or not. I dislike this recent trend where people frown upon teams queuing in unranked. Direct your criticism to Anet, not your fellow players who are doing nothing wrong.

I don’t like that we won’t be able to choose more than one adept trait per tree. i.e. you wouldn’t be able to pick up both Mender’s Purity & Glamour Mastery despite going 6 points into Inspiration. And you would be forced to take one of Shattered Conditions, Restorative Illusions or Disrupter’s Sustainment. While this type of restriction will undoubtedly be easier to balance, it’s still pretty annoying.

You also won’t be able to go into more than 3 trait trees, so I’m getting ready to mourn the potential loss of Signet Mesmer. :’(

I’m very excited about these changes.

Mirror makes most sense as a manipulation trait. I would mark Ether Feast as a clone trait, but that’s kind of weird since you aren’t actually producing any clones. Manipulation might be the best there as well.

You could see some interesting strategies utilizing on heal runes and Mirror. Might be worth it, but who knows.

Time Warp = glamour = I’m in heaven.

Yes, as an avid theory crafter fanboy, I’m very excited at all the possibilities here!! While there will be a plethora of interrupt builds, I’m even more excited to try out weird builds that might incorporate Bountiful Disillusionment. Or even the possibility of taking on Domination, Inspiration and Dueling for all the Mantra traits… So much on the table.

I think I’d for sure be trying out Imbued Diversion, CS and Harmonious Mantras with sword/focus+GS. So many AOE interrupts/stuns.

Came for the music. Stayed for the interrupts.

While I’m slightly afraid of how unbalanced things will be with all these dramatic changes, I’m excited for so many new builds being available especially in reference to lockdown.

the thread being over run by Mesmer mains… sigh.

Obviously DE. We’d see so much more build diversity and viability with this one change.

I just think that PU suffers from the single biggest weakness that all condition Mesmer builds suffer from: slow dps over time. However, I think PU does worse than both signets and MtD in this regard. The only way I can see it out-dpsing Signets is if you take pistol instead of torch. Because of the very slow ramp up of dmg when taking torch, it makes it easy to outmaneuver strategically when facing semi competent teams.

eta – both signets and PU can have issues holding a point, but at least with signets, you can potentially end the fight in your favor quicker. Mtd is another story, which struggles 1vX.

I’ll have to read your guide, but I’m a bit discouraged since I don’t really have much interest in the play style in and of itself. My opinion might be effected by bias, though I like to think I’m objective when discussing my opinions on builds…

Allarius.5670:

Mimic, 1/4 sec cast, 30 sec cooldown
Manipulation: Copy boons and daze your foe. Copy all boons if you interrupt your foe.
Daze: 1 sec
Boons Copied: 3
Boons Copied on Interrupt: 12
Range: 900
Unblockable

… I think that might just about do it …

:D

+1

This might actually legitimize thief’s insanely OP Mesmer steal. Very interesting and cool design here.

Just had some fun doing a quick theory craft session. There’s probably better places to look for PU builds besides myself, but here’s what I came up with on the fly:

Power PU http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fhAQNAscRlknpMtNqxGNcrRiqhY6XpahyupJVgSVC-TJhFwAAOFAMeCAj2fYaZAA

Condition PU http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fhAQNArfWlknpRtFqxBNcrNiuxY6H6oBUuzPlMgdB-TJRHwAJLDA4UAI4JAEa/BA

While I think there’s definitely a case for viability with PU, I really don’t like the playstyle at all and would recommend other condition specs to try out. I think compared to other similar condi specs, PU is much slower in terms of total dmg output. I haven’t done extensive testing, so I’d chalk it up to personal preference for me.

That being said, you can also go power PU which is interesting. However, the same issue arises here where in other power-focused phantsams builds are much faster with overall dps and control. Overall, your rate of dps in a PU build is mainly determined by whether you go with torch or not. If I’m going condi, I’d take torch, but if I’m going dps, I’d probably go pistol or sword.

One thing is for sure: PU gives whatever build you’re playing the utmost amount of survivability you can have on Mesmer. This is obviously its highlight. Goodluck with your exploring and come back and let us know if you have any luck with PU variants!

Wait… I was going to say something nice in this thread then never post in it again, but then I saw this monstrosity of a comment:

Clone production needs a nerf. Then there will be room for more build diversity. With clone production as it is Shatter will always be the strongest option and there won’t be room for anything else.

Ok, so you do realize that the Mesmer mechanic is based on clone production, right? Every build we can possibly create revolves around… producing clones to either shatter or serve as AI companions. Buffing the latter promotes somewhat lazy gameplay which is literally the only thing I can sanely assume you were getting at in your post. There are some great options for phantasm shatter hyrbids, but I wouldn’t want to see phantasms buffed into higher tier play. See Turret Engi.

There are definitely some creative and constructive ways to improve the Mesmer class, and our forum does an excellent job at detailing these. The root of our issues lie within where our traits are placed and the actual effectiveness of said traits. I’ll leave you peeps to discuss the rest.

Jasher.6580:

The purpose of this thread is to try and gather some ideas from the community on how Mesmers could be changed. All feedback will be welcomed, but I would prefer commentary from people who do not play Mesmers as their main character.

Hopefully Anet listens to some good ideas from the non-Mesmer community, because they aren’t receptive to nearly anything we post in our forums. Thanks for the good will and effort of bringing balance to all classes and not just your own.

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/participate-in-community-run-pvp-tournaments-and-obtain-the-most-lavish-llama-in-the-land/

Omg maybe they really do listen!? I’m on a personal mission to achieve my own little cute llama now!

Come on Anet, keep up the work with these rewards. We can definitely do better moving forward.

I don’t know if anyone else is going to pick apart your long winded post piece by piece, but I will gladly bite the bait.

Arena Net seems unwilling to accept that I exist.

This is unequivocally untrue. Compared to other games of similar genre, Anet caters MOSTLY to its casual PvE player base. Now whether this is a good thing or a bad thing can be argued, but I think you’re one of the first players I know after playing the game since near launch has said such a thing.

When this game launched, it was perfect so far as PvP goes. There was a PvP system, and players who wanted to play it could jump right in and play, no problems. But if you didn’t enjoy PvP, that was fine too, the game didn’t force you to.

lol The game still doesn’t force you to play PvP.

There were no rewards that PvP players could get that couldn’t be gained through PvE, and most PvP rewards were completely useless to PvEers, and that was great. I could completely ignore the PvP element, as I will always want to do, and not feel punished for it.

There are few items that can only be gotten exclusively through PvP. Would you like me to list the items that can only be exclusively gotten from PvE content???

But then they added the wardrobe system, and suddenly seriously PvPers had tons of new skins that PvEers didn’t, many of which are difficult or even impossible to earn through PvE activities but were relatively easy under the previous PvP reward systems.

Considering that PvPers were never decently rewarded for playing the content until those changes, I don’t think this is so horrible. Which skins are you saying are difficult/impossible to get? I need examples. So far, your post is full of hyperbole.

They also made changes to the Dailies that make it often difficult if not impossible to complete the three necessary without doing either PvP or Fractals (which are equally do-not-want), so PvP is often the only option for picking up that spare, whether we enjoy it or not.

We might agree here. I don’t want players like you in PvP just for the dailies. And it’s bad enough having people on classes that they know nothing about. I’m sure people doing Fractals don’t want you on their team either… Anet needs to rework the dailies. This may be a radical idea, but I wouldn’t mind if PvPers didn’t have dailies at all…

Please fix this, all of this. Please respect that while some of your players enjoy PvE and deserve a rich play experience, many of your players DO NOT and will not, and what seems to be a continuous effort to convince players to PvE only serves to make us more and more frustrated with the game. If you want to have a mechanism to bribe players into PvEing a few times, just so they know what it’s about, that’s fair enough, go ahead on that, but once a player has played a few rounds, allow THEM to decide whether they enjoy PvE or not, and if they do not, RESPECT that choice, and allow them to go back to the elements they enjoy, without them missing out on cool rewards that they might want.

Fixed.

1. Add methods of earning ANY currently PvP-only rewards via PvE means, using equivalent amounts of time and effort. Don’t make them ridiculously onerous if the PvP method of earning them is relatively easy.

Are you against game modes having exclusive items??? That’s my first question. More importantly, if you are, then how do you propose they add all of the PvE exclusive items into PvP?

Now, some PvPers will argue that there are rewards that can only be earned through PvE, and they’re upset about that. That’s a fair complaint and feel free to argue for better access to those rewards through equivalent amounts of time and effort spent doing PvP, but that’s a completely separate argument and has nothing to do with what I’m saying here.

Actually it’s not a separate argument at all. What you fail to apparently understand is that pvpers have been getting the short ends of the stick in terms of rewards SINCE LAUNCH. And even now, it takes less effort AND time to get better and more rewards in PvE. PvP content is harder and less pleasant. The tracks take longer. You get less loot. You get less gold. In a format that has never been rewarding financially (which also translates to less ability to purchase stuff from the gem store and TP), the logical thing for pvpers is to gain exclusive items.

I think all game formats should have exclusive rewards. There should be a healthy balance between time/effort and players should be compensated for such. Right now, rewards are ok in PvP, but it takes a lot more time and effort than in PvE. See my signature for some ideas on how to improve the reward system. Right now, it seems like WvWers are the ones who keep getting crapped on in this regard, but the last person I’m willing to listen cry about this issue is a PvEr.

See the build in my signature. It’s a pretty legit dueling spec for condi.

That being said, what format will you be going into? If wvw, then it’ll be hard to chase people with condi unless you go MtD. And in some dueling arenas, some skills like pDisenchanter are banned.

Ross Biddle.2367:

MailMail.6534:

CS is so underrated.

Shhh, the IP Shatter Mesmer Purist Association™ might come slap a lawsuit on you.

Despite our differences, I respect what the IPSMPA organization stands for. I just disagree with their methods.