Interrupt what, bud? S/D literally has no interruptable abilities. 2 (return) and 4 are both 0.25 seconds and not reasonably interruptable by a human being and CnD is 0.5 seconds and never used. This statement itself shows how little you know about your opponent, something that simply does not work as a lock-down mesmer. Your interrupt got evaded? Guess what, it wasn’t going to interrupt something anyway. You missed.
If you have mantra of distraction and have any decent knowledge of D/P thieves you have a really strong opportunity to shut the class down whenever they lay Black Powder, and it’s also one of the easiest abilities things react to and ’rupt.
If the thief is very experienced he can double back on the powder and still gain stealth with a second HS but most will “wtf” and die. This is assuming you didn’t use GS 5 to interrupt him and you don’t follow up with GS 5 or any kind of immob, stun, etc. or simply the second charge of mantra of distraction.
:D
semi-above average thief using unsecured BP+HS combo in aware of enemy mesmer with no-cd MoD charges near? Instead of rerolling to non-unterruptuble sw\d ?
OK, stop joking. Sw\d really very hard to interrupt tbh (but have chance with some flanking strike interrupt practice) .
PB is underwhelming. Abundance of weak traits (of mesmer and other classes) doesn’t make it legit. It needs rework.
Yeah, but probably game can’t distinguish sources of already applied swiftness, thus can’t clearly determine is it 1st time or not. And seems there are no counters (meters) implemented for ground skills with buff/debuff/other effects. Can’t recall such skills that commit their effect only for 1st pass. Barrage, veil, line/ring of warding, caltrops, etc just inflict effect all the time (through pulsing sometimes) or check current buff on person (stealth for veil).
Yeah, 2nd ways seems most probable, though it doesn’t let stack swiftness from multiple source. But better then current state anyway I think if there are no hidden pitfalls with this solution.
Many ask for temporal curtain speed buff granting fix and assume it is easy too implement. But possibly there are some kinda issues with it.
Right now I see anet try to prevent temporal curtain abusing (swiftness stacking through multiple passing through the field) by current swiftness applying restrictions.
Let’s suggest some ways to fix it.
1. Give to each boon applying their owner. Not only last/first person who grant boon, but weapon/utility/elite skill too (mb with some ID). E.g. some person has swiftness buff and game knows this buff consists of 8 sec of warrior A warhorn swiftness buff and 3 sec of guardian B staff swiftness buff.
In that case TC swiftness buff could be applied cause game see absent of swiftness from TC (or if TC part less then max duration).
Pluses: would completely fix problem?,..
Minuses: hard to implement, much more burden to CPU?,..
2. Just make TC always apply buff on person who have it already if that presenting buff has remaining duration less then max possible from TC. I.e. TC always renews speed buff for its max duration.
Pluses: easy to implement,..
Minuses: partial fix,..
Back on topic though, as I do not see our server’s sPvP channel being used at all.
Pug teammates can belong to different servers. Anyway if some ppls are using server spvp channel then they are not a pug in full definition of this word.
I remember WoW building an integrated VOIP and it failing hard.
It sounds great in theory until you realize that a VOIP doesn’t matter if other people don’t join in.
..and often the people who need to be on a VOIP the most, won’t be there.
P.s. if you need another reason why it’s a bad idea to voice chat with pugs, feel free to jump in Xbox Live into a Halo game with a headset on. A few minutes of people blasting their music through a low-quality mic and kids whining about the most inane things possible should give you a taste of what it’s like.
Idk about wow experience. But mb just mute button against each teamplayer, mb audio ban\friend list?
About profanity issues. Do\how other games solve this problem?
Probably there are some minuses, but pluses too. Sometimes pluses weigh more then minuses. Using cars lead to car crashes, obesity, traffic jams, etc, but it doesn’t stop ppl to use it because of advantages.
In the context of soloq pvp (10-15 min, pug, difference in experience) it would be a plus imo.
And again, get annoyed by voice chat – turn option off.
I’m starting to think that ppl against just have shrill voices
In game voice has never helped games that had it built in.
If you are really want team communication and team based tools, the solution is obvious and it has nothing to do with Anet.
Wow!
Proofs (for all games with buit-in voice chat)?
I would be pleased to have convenient in-game voice chat tool at the pugs (i.e. unorganized ppl) disposal.
And while the cost is free for users, what are companies paying for the ability to have Curse integrated into their systems?
Idk, but even cost of dedicated servers (750$ monthly for 3 spvp servers from ur example, or even 10+k $) can be acceptable price for this option be available. If u wanna such fast pace game be e-sport then in game voice chat helps make it more popular IMO. What could possibly bring much more money. But this is work for anet managers to find worthwhile solutions.
Even games with it included players tend to opt out and use third party apps because it offers better quality, better control and better flexibility.
Whilst it can be true for organized teams, for pugs there is another story.
3. For example Curse Voice already suggested (no servers, no personell, no equipment, no moderators, etc.). We can’t say about costs of probable decisions, so let’s skip it anyway.
voip is reserved mainly with the people that you know. this is why premade teams use voip not only for coordination but also for the fact that they know each other
What? In my CS experience built-in voice chat was vry useful and I never hesitated to use it.
Soloqueue is meant for fast matches and no strings attached team ups. it is meant to be voipless.
Emm?
2pdawis
1. Cite from link you mentioned above:
“That’s why BF2 2142 has a mute button and if your squad leader you can also kick.”
Mb separate banlist.
2. Same here. Could be tuned to keep sound record for 10 mins after match end if no reports.
3. For example Curse Voice already suggested (no servers, no personell, no equipment, no moderators, etc.). We can’t say about costs of probable decisions, so let’s skip it anyway.
4. Other third party voice chat = ‘Need to press 2 buttons’ = less actions/result ratio
5. Not at all. Leased/dedicated servers with different channels, direct peer-to-peer connection (like Curse Voice I think?), et cetera.
And if u don’t wanna use voice chat nobody will forcde u to do it.
I mean efforts and money for anet. “manpower, equipment, and maintenance” – "without big efforts and money (through lease\adapting existing solutions) "
Some ppl haven’t voice chat at all, one use only mumble, 2nd – ts, 3rd one prefers ventrillo, etc. It easier to motivate ppl to use voice chat if it already built-in. It would be significant help to anet goal make gw2 esport IMO.
I’m not sure that anet made these traits gold worthy to pull gamers money because you need skillpoints anyway. As new player u can’t buy skill point through gemshop anyway. I.e new player forced to grind. Mb there other motives for this, but now I prefer it be removed from pvp.
Because it makes pvp (and game in general) significantly more attractive and convenient for solo players without big efforts and money (through lease\adapting existing solutions) IMO.
I think it could be configurable to silence individual ppl, set max loud, etc. Lags are not necessarily, anet just could lease voip serveres with different bandwith channel. Using ts dousn’t makes u lag after all. And nobody forces to use it indeed.
What about guilds and WvW? or servers? What would stop me from just jumping to the enemies channel and disrupting communications by rick rolling them during reset night?
Would each guild get their own channel?
How many channels can a guild have?
How many guilds are there? Do you need to have X guild members in order to get an in-game channel? What about single/2 player guilds? Do they get their own channel?
Don’t hurry. Let’s look how it would work at pvp at first. And as I said, nobody forces u to use it.
There are plenty of options available for voice coms without adding it in-game.
If PvP players are interested they can certainly explore these options. But if they aren’t using them now, there is no reason they are going to start using them if it was added in-game.
I think you underestimate power of convenience and easy access.
It’s not your job to chase down a roamer off point on war. That’s for a thief/mes/guard/ele. This is a L2P issue.
You have cooldowns that let you become completely invulnerable to direct + condi damage. All classes deserve that too right?
Not all want to walk support [ham/shout]BOW meta build.
Sure endure pain/zerker stance.. lets use it and hope you dont get wrecked after.
Ow wait your walking shoutbow? lol good luck vs them.. they just spam some till you shout: kitten i am out of shouts! and die after.
Try to LoS them if u are zerk. If they wanna cap\decap point they need come to spot.
In ArenaNets bold attempt at appeasing as broad a range audience as they could, they invented the thief and mesmers classes for players who enjoy installing hacks and cheats in their game. Now these players no longer need to search out cheats and hacks for their game to satisfy their cheap craving, which also makes moderating the game that much easier for Anet. Way to cut out the middle man, nice job!
these 2 classes both include the tools necessary to cheat, troll, and fleece their way to victory, every time.
I’m with you man!
Mesmers should be at hospital because of multiple personality disorder and thief’s place is prison!
Viva la France!
Base power: 2333
Max greatsword strength: 1100
Critical damage: 1.9913 (199.13%, I’m using ogre runes)
Damage modifier: 1.2584 (Predator’s Onslaught * Hunter’s Tactics * Ogre(6))
Tbh I’m not sure that you did correct math.
Why u count ogre runes damage. There are no need to include runes modifiers in math (cause they are class independent). And there are no place for Predator’s Onslaught trait if we are talking about metabuilds (Read The Wind is usual choice).
Cause I don’t see the math behind thief calculations I’m not shure you included Exposed weakness (10%) and Lead attacks (~6-15%) traits modifiers (d/p current meta).
I think while burst damage can be roughly same the difference is prereq setup and rate of application. Mesmer can land burst every 12-15s and burst really predictable most times. Ranger can’t do their maul from stealth consistently, i.e big tells usually (not for longbow though ^^).
Personally I’m ok with thieves burst. Mb weapon mobility?
EDIT: "Why u count ogre runes damage. " I got it. Maul can hit for 5k certainly If this is what you are saying.
Mesmers can trash thieves in general. It just takes a really really good mesmer. S/D is only hard because landing a burst is super hard since they evade 50% of the time and landing a well timed burst on a good player in general is usually tricky. d/p can get really trashed by a mesmer if you break their stealth. If it were pure dueling, mesmer would win most of the time if they were using CI
Good(!) d/p thief beats good mesmer (CI too) IMO. D/p aware of lockdown mesmer would’t use easy interruptible blackpowder+hearseeker combo too much. Blind and damage spam through shadow shot + positioning behind mesmer back (for harder blind cleanse through AA) + dodging + LoS + active shortbow use + roots through panic strike and surpise shot + good auto and frequent sigils procs + good use of stolen stability = fight in thief favor. It is true that mesm have more chances against d\p then sw\d, but still thief has upper hand.
Ppl just don’t meet lockdown mesmer often, so still not adapted to fight him in general, but it matter of practice.
Thief has lesser weapon coodowns (if assume iniative is global weapon CD), i.e. more frequent use of burst/pressure
LOL what a joke. Again, D/P is done as soon as its stealth is broken. The matchup is very much in favor of the mesmer because of how easy it is to interrupt them and because of how predictable the d/p rotation is and how easy it is to interrupt with how many you already have.
Are you trying to Powder/HS next to the Mesmer by chance? xD
I main mesmer so im telling you that d/p is trashed easily by CI because its true lol. Go to a dueling arena and watch some CI vs d/p fights if you can to educate yourself.
This is second or third case I saw when mesmer claims that mesmer trashes thieves in Obsidian sanctum. OS such OS ^^
I can beat bad d/p thieves (who don’t adapt to enemy playstyle) in arena (Coulter much better then me at arena btw), but good ones are pretty strong obstacle.
Makes no difference. You can cast it while running, and animation is the same as Signet of the Wild(or very similar to it). Sure, it increase the window for dodge, but what about it? Are we going to start new hype to glue eyes to screen and wait until someone will start casting it? Problem lies not in it’s cast time.
Recharge raised to 90s
Anet did reduce cd to 60 second so it’ll be on pair with Rampage. I personally am happy to see that people do not stick to only one elite(Rampage) as they did previously.
Health of roots reduced by half
They die after being hit twice, and if I remember correctly, you can crit them. No point really.
Line of sight requirement
As using LoS is also part of skill and allows to outplay others while using your knowledge about environment around you, Ranger has way too many LoS required skills, so lack of LoS on Entangle is a good change of pace.
Blockable
And what does it change? Few classes that have access to Block skills via weapons or Aegis Boon up the sleeve. What about the rest of the classes?
In my opinion and from my experience, the reason why Entangle is bit OP as too good CC is because you have to target it to destroy. That means you lose target on ranger.
After destroying roots, you have to retarget ranger again. With it’s pet nearby and that silly bug which swaps target to pet sometimes, retargeting ranger is time consuming.
In my opinion, let melees(I doubt ranged classes suffer from this in 1v1), without target lock hit root with auto attack.
Since those roots are around 2 shot, increase it’s hp/durability to be hit 3 times to not make this elite skill useless.
What does it change?
Entangle stays as CC skill which work well within all aspects – good cd, good duration, and possibility of not difficult removal, which gives a fair breather for melees.
With this, Rangers still have a very good Elite skill choices, one with long cd, 2nd with short one.
Sry what?
1. Bigger tells always matter. Better with different and obvious animation ofc.
2. 48 traited cd with rune of Krait is pretty strong (OP?)
3. 2 hits? On zerk mesmer I need to use BF (~ 3 auto) + 2-3 auto = 5-6 auto (if u wish to destroy root). And root is structure and can not be critically hitted (hi, condy builds!).
4. Questionable statement.
5. Some classes have blocks, other classes have invisibility or port to handle.
For me personally somewhat important 1 and 2. Still not 1st priority to fix though.
LOL what a joke. Again, D/P is done as soon as its stealth is broken. The matchup is very much in favor of the mesmer because of how easy it is to interrupt them and because of how predictable the d/p rotation is and how easy it is to interrupt with how many you already have.
Mesmers can trash thieves in general. It just takes a really really good mesmer. S/D is only hard because landing a burst is super hard since they evade 50% of the time and landing a well timed burst on a good player in general is usually tricky. d/p can get really trashed by a mesmer if you break their stealth. If it were pure dueling, mesmer would win most of the time if they were using CI
Good(!) d/p thief beats good mesmer (CI too) IMO. D/p aware of lockdown mesmer would’t use easy interruptible blackpowder+hearseeker combo too much. Blind and damage spam through shadow shot + positioning behind mesmer back (for harder blind cleanse through AA) + dodging + LoS + active shortbow use + roots through panic strike and surpise shot + good auto and frequent sigils procs + good use of stolen stability = fight in thief favor. It is true that mesm have more chances against d\p then sw\d, but still thief has upper hand.
Ppl just don’t meet lockdown mesmer often, so still not adapted to fight him in general, but it matter of practice.
Thief has lesser weapon coodowns (if assume iniative is global weapon CD), i.e. more frequent use of burst/pressure
If the guy understood enough to actually stay close to his teammates, taking the buffs that warriors and guardians are giving out, the thief chasing him would be the one getting wrecked all over the place.
Mesmer work in pvp – roam and make + 1 fast fights. Same for thief. Thief wouldn’t jump on mesmer in 1vs2+ . He would jump when mesmer roams or in fight vs other enemies. Mesmer can jump on thief in same way too, just thief does that work better.
Do we need OP skills at all? I prefer balanced and counterplayable. Ok, let’s have some time to adapt and see how it works. But don’t like idea of devaluation of boon-ripping play so hard.
So it’s pretty safe to say thread=derailed. Is it possible to get the forum specialist to kinda summarize what the constructive posts have stated? >.<
What I basically got from all of this is that:
Some players feel that power builds are requiring way to perfect of play to actually be viable in a real setting. Shatter mesmer is a perfect example.
Supcutie: “Should playing power be rewarding? Yes. Should playing power be so disproportionately more difficult? Probably not.”
Low tiers, mesmer isn’t great (because players aren’t great at mesmer)
Top tiers, mesmer isn’t great (because players ARE great and know how to hunt them).
Mid and high tiers, mesmer is great (scary even).
Some players think simply adding a small amount of condition removal to standard shatter mesmer would help it as right now mesmers often need smart teammates to clear condis for them.
Thief tends to cover the bases that mesmer can do (Burst, mobility, teleports, interrupts) and do them better, leaving mesmer with only a few assets to the team that thief doesn’t (Portal, more boon removal, stealth reses/moa).
I’ve actually been playing shatter mesmer a lot lately and I was wondering if anyone attempts to run (0/4/0/4/6) instead? You get feedback on pretty much every res, eliminating nade, shortbow thief and warrior longbow pressure from the meta builds (not to mention power rangers!). You also remove two conditions on heal, which was identified as a major concern for the build. As for damage, I can still wipe out about 50-75% of the light golem health with a standard Mirror Blade Shatter + Mind Stab combo. That’s pretty on par with regular shatter mesmer. The only thing you really lose is vuln on daze, boon removal and halting strike. I think that’s pretty solid, and you can survive a LOT longer with that single condition removal.
Sure, no boon removal, but you get a lot of support and the ability to survive if an ele, god forbid, taps you with their burning. Also, you still have portal and lots of reflects available.
As a suggestion, what do you think about:
Ether Feast – Remove two conditions if you have two or more clones.
Look at Selya.5039 suggestions in this threads too.
It seems pretty agreed on that skills like Rampage as One and Lich Lord should be every 6 seconds instead of every 3s, but what about less used elites like Tornado, Dagger Storm and Rampage? Do they deserve to be every 3s because they aren’t used as much?
They should all be on the same 6 second cycle to allow for sufficient counter play.
Divide them into 2 camps: offensive and defensive.
Offensive 3 stacks every 6 seconds.
Defensive 6 stacks every 6 seconds.
Didn’t check how how Dagger storm works now. But if an interrupt (after stability ripping) cansels this elite – probably 3s pulse ok then. Seems Lich Form is ok too (cause only 1 stack every 3 sec), not sure though (UP?). But RaO and other pulsing multistack stability skills probably asks for change (after some adapt time?) from spvp standpoint imho.
Ok, RaO was easily countered and needed buff as I said. But right now RaO seems not (or vry hard counterd). I suggest to change to 3-6 stacks of stab every 5-6 sec.
All warrior 10 stacks of stability can be removed with right using of boon stripping.
I personally prefer even RaO with 10 stacks every 10 sec, but not 3 stack every 3 sec.
@MithranArkanere.8957 You forgot laser beams from eyes
About RaO, it needed buff for certain, but now seems ltl OP. Mb ppl will adapt to counter new RaO. But anyway pulsing reapplying makes shattered concetration trait and boon ripping in general much more uselles and less counter play (with current rate). At this moment seems need bigger delay before reapplying 3 stacks of stab.
I know. But that pulsing ability (with that rate and number of stacks) devaluate boon ripping. Used 3 clone shatter to remove all boons and 3 s later all boons are back. mb not even 3 sec later – it could be 2, 1, 0.1 sec later because mesmer need to start shatter perfectly to fit that reapplying boon window. Clones need time to run, etc. Most often it would ~1-2 s before reapplying all boons again. 5-6 sec time to pulse seems ok
Jump =/= valid path. If u need to jump to get to place then it counts as non valid as always. But if u have any some other route (without jumps) at some distance then it counts valid.
Though pryob not all of changes was intended.
This was taken as a nerf to thief and mesmer mobility, with the hope that other classes in the dps role like ranger and medi guard could at least compete for that spot on a team.
Here’s to hoping Heart of Thorns takes a good revamp of the clone/phantasms and shatter mechanics and replaces the horrendous minor and major traits the class has.
I would be appreciative if devs move DE to major adept in dueling
I think on some dungeon mobs encounters pretty easy to keep 3 phantasms up.
I don’t count CoF p1 as high end PvE.
Arah, fractal 50 are better examples. In Arah every boss has an aoe that instantly destroys them. In fractal 50 you got archdiviner on first floor IF his spinning projectiles are not hitting the phantasms. Svanir shaman maybe higher uptime, but he still kills your phantasms with autoattack swings. That’s about it.
Even at some Arah encounters possible to keep 3 phantasms up most time and soloing it. Final p1 boss e.g. For Lupi DE more pref cause reflect OP damage and his mechanics.
Or for example Lvl 50 Thaumanova Fractal Mesmer Solo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYfyggu8QRY&t=419
Lupi’s kick will destroy your phantasms. That Thaumanova solo is one of the betetr examples, but you also have to realize it was a solo, for example the ooze won’t hit anything that’s not melee range, and the endboss people stack melee while someone runs the bombs out.
But do Urban instead, different story. Same for Dredge or Volcanic fractal. Arah p2 endboss aoe will destroy phantasms, as will the 2nd boss in that path using the explosive barrel. In arah p2 even the phantasms don’t benefit from in phase status on final boss so they do 0 damage to the boss, making deceptive evasion betetr since you’re the only source of damage.
Yep, that is one of reason I said DE (Deceptive Evasion) is preferable for Lupi – illusions die fast + u need illusions. But mostly because of Lupi mechanics: numbers of projectiles of his attack “Frenzied blast” (if I recall right) depends on number of enemies. I.e. more illusions = more projectiles = more reflected damage. This is much bigger contributor to damage than CP. But even during Lupi phase 1 you can keep all phantasms up (swordsmans for example – they keep some distance and have some evade frames on leap attack). And anyway u should keep agro on youself, not on phantasms.
At Arah p2 Alphard (2nd boss I think) u want pretty much reflect mantra builds (without CP). This barrel bomb spawns only on successfuly landed projectile attack. So if u would use good positioning and reflects(wich negates most of others Alphard attacks too ) – bomb even will not spawn.
Some ppl prefer to do solo. Though I prefer to do Arah on warr (did long time ago to be correct, dropped it now).
I’m just saying that there are bunch of encounters where I don’t want to spawn clones.
MB 1 of reason.
WoC 1-attack cycle = 1.3s (cause some aftercast), damage coeff = 0.3, dc per sec ~0.23.
SS 1-attack cycle = 1.4s, damage coef = 0.540 (<300) dc/s ~0.386; 0.675(300-600), dc/s~0.48; 0.810(600-900), dc/s~0.579; 0.945(>900), dc/s~0.675.
Bounces work at distance ~300-450 (can’t recall right now), so u should be pretty close for double tap.
WoC double hit coeff = 0.23*2 = 0.46. I.e. traited WoC better or same then SS at bounce distance (<450). Though traited GS Mirror Blade ability to burst grows at this distance too.
If u need good ranged power damage with burst potential – u tied to gs
Usually good sd/d always have Infiltrator’s Return up and even rooted can make a distance for safety. Inf signet + Infiltrator’s Return for stun break. Or steal daze to stop chain stun. Just personal experience though.
I prefer balanced and counterplayable. Ok, let’s have some time to adapt and see how it works. But don’t like idea of devaluation of boon-ripping play so hard.