Guild Wars 2

Ravezaar.4951:

Oasis Event (PvE) in a WvW/PvP Map = wont be buying Expansion

From what I understand, you can kill players to steal their cores (and that’s actually the best thing you can do, since you are denying one score for the enemy and scoring for your team). And the event results in damaged gates so you can easily push and flip many objectives at the same time.

There’s some PVE involved, but who cares?

Zenith.7301:

Menaka.5092:

Zenith.7301:

Hell they could simply place an icd on the chaos storm daze of like 2 or 3 seconds

please, don’t

Please leave a mechanic that kills build variety and strangles the design of other skills for the mesmer. Especially if it helps my preferred 1v1 roaming build at the expense of the skill being useless everywhere else. As in, a weapon completely kitten in spvp and pve and even zerg wvw.

Please, explain how chaos storm being a chaotic RNG-based daze-on-pulse is strangling the design of other skills.

(btw, I don’t care about 1v1 and I think a cooldown on CS daze would make the weapon actually a lot less effective in both PVP and WVW)

From my experience, your role can change quite a lot from running with 12 people and fighting similar numbers to running with 20 people and taking on zone blobs and bigger guilds.

If you have a backline-focusing group, you can easily run squishy gear and:

• any variation of shatter builds
• interrupt builds
• phantasm-based builds (somewhat less effective)

If you don’t have a backline-focus group, you might go for a frontline-shatter build (but you’ll need very tanky gear and lose most of your damage) or some hybrid phantasm/mantra build like the one Ansau is suggesting or the ones I’m discussing in this other thread that are a phantasm/mantra

Zenith.7301:

Hell they could simply place an icd on the chaos storm daze of like 2 or 3 seconds

please, don’t

Even if it stacked over 25 in PvP, condition cleansing and Resistance will counter it.

Fay.2735:

ASP.8093:

Well, if you don’t shatter them, maybe they’ll shatter you?

Mind… Blown…. REKT

there, fixed it!

and, no, I wouldn’t shatter a sentient being.

I’m testing a few builds with GS/Staff for large scale group fights, you might want to check the thread I’ll try to post a video for Iteration 5 in the next few days.

If you’re talking about the GS/Staff double ranged shatter, it worked for me in small scale roaming, but I like Sw/Torch+GS more.

Asura to learn the class (harder to see the tells, so it’s easier to play), then a Charr when you are confident enough.

Did you try zerker everything with pvt armor? Worked better than knights for me in the past. Also, you really want the poultry meat food to reduce the condition pressure on you.

Build wise, you might consider taking Mental Torment instead of Halting Strike and Illusionary Invigoration instead of Illusionary Elasticity.

Aside from that, it’s all matter of using your defensive cooldowns properly: you have 3 stealths, evasion on blurred frenzy, distortion on the F4 shatter, plenty of condi removal (save it for Immobilize and Chill mostly).

keenlam.4753:

Also, in large group (zerg), with this build, you can join frontline and fight in melee range. This should help secure shatters better than, say, stay at backline like other builds right? But again, this is just me theorycrafting. I need to test it out in WvW first

I don’t think even CERN can measure the time it takes a clone to die in any decent WvW fight, and they work with stuff that decays in nanoseconds.

The only thing I can help anyone with is open field WvW in an organized group.
And looking fabulous.

I hate GvGs, even if I played my fair share o’ them.
I did roam (and sometimes still roam) a lot in small groups, but rarely solo since I don’t follow the “cheese of the day” news closely.

Posted a new video of me playing the Iteration 4 build (66020).

What’s good:

• Damage
• Stability stacks stripping with Chaos Storm
• Applying Vulnerability with Chaos Storm/Daze
• Phase Retreat

What’s bad:

• Even with TD, you feel very squishy
• Retaliation will eat you alive
• I miss Restorative Mantras

What I can’t tell:

• How effective Confounding Suggestions is

Next iteration (iteration 5)
I’ll try to give up CS and get back RM (and 1k HP), and I’ll give a try to MoR.

Sebrent.3625:

I’ve always felt that Portal is just to invaluable for an organized group to not have.

• Initiate with portal
• Jump out for heals and jump back in
• Bypass a larger group

If you watch some of the organized play from Osicat (yes, I know, older videos), you’ll see he did that quite a bit.

I know, I love Portal! When we have the luxury of having two mesmers in our raid, I usually run Portal, in all other cases I switch from Veil to Portal when I see it fit (there are some Portal videos in my channel).

Sebrent.3625:

For fighting in zergs I’ve always found Greatsword and Scepter/Focus to be quite useful

I tested Scepter/Sword and Scepter/Focus ages ago (when Scepter was still a “hybrid” weapon), but never got around the clumsyness of Scepter autoattack. Now it’s more of a condi weapon and I wouldn’t take it in a power build.

Fay.2357:

Menaka.5092:

Doesn’t work for me. Maybe it’s my playstyle, but I’d rather have one big heal with a short cast than MoR. Of your suggestions, that’s the only one I would consider, but it would work only with the triple mantra, and I’m not open to take that trait over TD.

I’d definitely recommend taking another look at MoR, particularly if you’re using mender’s purity. It works really effectively with the ebb and flow of group fights in WvW. When you’re engaging, you’ve got instant heals and condition removals that you can hit as necessary. The engagement will usually cool off about 15-20 seconds later; allowing you to recharge it for the next engage. It’s a very efficient skill, and lets you put more time into actually dealing damage/other offense since it has no cast time until the recharge.

Still unconvinced, but I’ll give it a try. I’m not really feeling like conditions are a big problem: when I end up using my heal is usually because I had to go through some AoE field and didn’t have or didn’t want to use blink.

fluxit.8247:

My apologies, I offended your ego. But if you dont like my critique then I guess you werent looking for advice. Let me make this easy by no longer posting in this thread. I dont want to turn this into a contest.

This isn’t a contest indeed, it is a thread about the builds I was testing to see if those are more effective than what I was previously running.

I explained why I don’t agree with some of your choices or why I think those wouldn’t work for me and my group. It’s nothing personal.

You say your build is a lot better both damage and control wise, I asked for any video proof, because I cannot envision it working at all. Is it too much to ask for?

I have plenty of videos on my channel that show my gameplay because I know I’m not the best mesmer out there and I am open to critique, advice and suggestions.

Chaos Storm on the spike is great: ethereal field for Chaos Armor on blasts, aegis for allies, daze/chill/poison on the enemy! And with the staff trait you’ll probably have it ready on every push.

About phase retreat, you can consider learning (if you don’t know) how to forward-phase-retreat. It works nicely to stay in front of your group and won’t be very confusing for who’s following since you keep moving forward…

I disagree with Pyro because I love how Restorative Mantras works nicely on regroups, providing some heals if you lack blasts on water fields and/or empowers.

One thing I would change, unless you jump a lot from cliffs, is switching out Descent into Madness in favor of Debilitating Dissipation: since your clones will die pretty much instantly, they might as well drop some conditions (possibly weakness, if the RNG gods smile upon you) on your enemies…

Edit: if you have the guard stacks, you can consider switching some PVT to a Toughness based set (Knights/Cavalier/Nomad) because it’ll make your already large health pool more efficient.

fluxit.8247:

This is what I personally run when running with my guild.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fhAQNAsdWl0npGtFrxMNUrRipxY6eiJnTVFpCokhMOA-TlBBwAYV+B4UAgT9nU6D6t/wZlgkCgJlRA-w

The goal of this build is to do damage yes, but more importantly cause choas, pull and interrupt people and generally be a giant nuisance, especially when they try to reset and pull out, to catch people out of position and lock down people before your driver goes in for a bomb. It constantly reaps 25 stacks of might almost instantly and thus can churn out some much bigger numbers than what I see in your video.

I’m not trying to suggest that my build is better, but just that it has a very clear focus. It’s a lockdown build. I hope it gives you some interesting ideas to play with some other traits.

Do you have any video of you playing this?
I’m very curious about these big numbers you are talking about, since your only source of damage are Halting Strike and the sword autoattack.

fluxit.8247:

- _You invest into mantra buffing traits but all you have is mantra of pain which you admittedly would rather not have in the first place. _

Where did I say I would rather not have MoP? It’s a main source of damage for these builds and really good on the spike.

In some builds I invested one trait in mantras, in others I invested 2 traits, and they both synergize perfectly with a low-cooldown mantra like MoP (providing toughness and healing in tight situations).

fluxit.8247:

You have already invested into mantras, the mantra heal + menders purity is perfect for a quick uninterruptable top-up of health and condition removal, and the charge time is not a problem. You have plenty of time to charge your mantras when the driver calls for water/reset. _

Doesn’t work for me. Maybe it’s my playstyle, but I’d rather have one big heal with a short cast than MoR. Of your suggestions, that’s the only one I would consider, but it would work only with the triple mantra, and I’m not open to take that trait over TD.

fluxit.8247:

- _You want triumphant distortion for its 1 second of invulnerability on yourself and your phantasm when you cast one. This is okay, but its not a game changing trait.

Did you even bother reading the trait? Doesn’t work like that. I’m not gonna discuss this further with you since you don’t know what you’re talking about.

fluxit.8247:

Think about how much more damage you would bring to your guild group if you pulled targets together ready for a bomb so they don’t all escape out of your groups aoes and hammer train. Or imagine how many more bags your group would get if you immobilized and pulled targets as they were trying to retreat from your group. Imagine how much havoc you could cause if you focused your range pressure on the opposing team’s casters. Or imagine how useful a few timely reflects would be to mitigate ranged damage for a short time.

If you even bothered watching one of the dozens other videos I published, you would have seen that that was pretty much what I was doing.

I’m testing new things, and this thread is about what I’m seeing testing these new things.

fluxit.8247:

All I’m arguing is that, you are not important in a team fight. Its not about how much single target damage you alone can pump out. It’s about how you can support your group to improve everybody’s damage and or mitigate the damage everybody receives.

What I am arguing is that… that is exactly what I’m looking for.
I wanted to try and see if chaos storm stripping stacks of Stability, stunning or immobilizing and applying vulnerability on the spike was a better option that what I was previously running.

fluxit.8247:

These are the reasons why I chose the traits and skills that I chose when I modified your build. I don’t care if you’re not impressed by my critique.

I never said I was not impressed by your critique, I said I don’t agree with some of your choices, based on my playstyle and my experience with my group. In fact, the “I’m not impressed” line was referring to CI and BI, and I stand by it, at least for the WvW group/zerg busting scenario.

fluxit.8247:

Menaka.5092:

This is a variation of what I was playing before, with some different choices that I don’t agree with.

For the record there are very distinct differences between the modified build that I created and any of your four builds. For example, one difference is that I chose to use exotic gear (with ascended trinkets) as a more accurate representation of your actual stats. If you do actually have all of that ascended equipment along with all those infusions then you wasted a lot of time, money and laurels.

The build was made with what’s my actual gear, yeah. I have more than 5k hours played and I crafted ascended armor and weapons and bought ascended trinkets; I fail to see how it is “wasted” since I use it every day

Also, I have Bolt sitting in my inventory.

fluxit.8247:

My modified build also has a focus: the focus being mantras.

As I said, I’d rather have an invulnerable iZerker than another MoP, because it provides more burst.

fluxit.8247:

As I said in my previous post your build is trying to do TOO much. In fact, all of your builds are.
For instance:
- You want halting strike but you lack a lot of reliable interrupts.

Your build used focus and staff, my builds are using GS and staff, these weapon sets both have one “reliable” interrupt (focus pull vs iWave) and a RNG-based one (chaos storm). Actually, I could argue that Mirror Blade + Diversion is another “reliable” interrupt, but I won’t.

fluxit.8247:

- You want glamour mastery but all you have is veil. Why not take null field as well?

What should I give up for Null Field? MoP? Losing a lot of damage for a long cooldown skill that might or might not be of any use against an organized group that will move away from it in 1 or 2 seconds…

Glamour mastery would allow me to use veil again in mid fight in some scenarios, and that would make a huge difference for my group.

Ross Biddle.2367:

Yes signit of inspiration shares the mesmers stability stacks, doubling the parties stacks. Few problems though.

• 1 Mesmer for every 4 other players is just bad. Might aswell bring another guard for more stability application.

Signet of Inspiration has 45 seconds cooldown, Stand Your Ground traited is 24s iirc. So it’s a really poor way of doubling your stacks if you consider popping only 1 SYG per push.

Posted a few clips – not my best fights, but that’s all I got from yesterday:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgaDn13r6yo

Fay.2357:

I’ve tried a lot of stuff that’s very similar to some of your iterations. All of my experiments ultimately end in more or less the same way though: frustrated at the complete and total lack of any reliable aoe pressure that has less than a 30 second cooldown.

Yeah, you can drop chaos storm in a zerg and it’ll do some decent work…once every 35 seconds. Then you’re left with spamming iZerker and mind stab off cooldown. iZerker spins once then smushes, spins in a random direction, and requires a target to use. Mind stab really is still awful considering the cooldown and just doesn’t do much.

Adding Mantra of Pain to the mix gives a bit more options, but still, requires a target, and has a long recharge time…

Fay.2357:

Then you’ve got glamours that you can toss down…which do some stuff I guess. Null field is nice of course, for what it does, and feedback can be great…but more often is worthless as most zergs are not projectile-heavy.

I don’t think giving up MoP for Null Field of Feedback is worth it, as you said, they are both nice, but situational, and with long cooldowns…

Fay.2357:

Ultimately I just end up with the distinct impression that I’d be contributing far more by spamming random buttons on a staff ele.

I don’t know.

Ele has a lot of damage, but not “bursty” as our combos (iZerk + MoP / Mind Stab + MoP / Mirror Blade + Mind Wrack), same is for Necro wells and Life Transfer.

What I really envy from them is access to reliable (as in “non-RNG-based”) Chill and Poison and field control (walls, static fields, fear), and access to a variety of AoE effects, instead of just a few skills, and class mechanics that work well in big groups, instead of our broken clone/shatter system.

Playing on mesmer feels like you need to triple your effort to have the same results

fluxit.8247:

I made modifications to your ‘fourth’ build to simplify and improve it.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fhAQNAsdWl0npEtlpxYNUrNiphc6qRXSqAle0lFA-TlBBABRqEEgTBAOq/ki+guU+1z+DkCgJlRA-w

This is a variation of what I was playing before, with some different choices that I don’t agree with.

fluxit.8247:

If you want to be able to bomb hard with your team you’re on the wrong class. You can provide heavy ranged spike damage on small groups, but you don’t have aoes like eles and necros.

We have heavy ranged burst on 5 targets, that’s more than enough for an organized group… there’s no need to carpet a wide area when you manage to kill 3-5 people on the spike…

fluxit.8247:

Since you had already invested in mantras I changed triumphant distortion to harmonious mantras. I also changed your heal to the mantra heal because the mantra heal + harmonious mantras + menders purity + restorative mantras + protective mantras = super synergy, super condi removal, uninterruptable heals with power return and group heals whenever you charge a mantra.

I’d rather have an invulnerable iZerker that can hit for up to 8k than another MoP that can hit or 2-3k…

fluxit.8247:

I chose sword focus as your secondary weapon set because being in a guild group you need to think about how your skills not only meet your goals but the goals of your group. With sword you bring defensive capabilities for yourself and immobolize. Immobolize is really overpowered. Focus is also important for interrupting, displacing, pulling enemies.

As I said, I did miss my focus pull. I don’t 100% agree with the immobilize being OP, because most of the times your clone will die before you can swap. When you land it, sure, it’s powerful. But you can’t rely on that.

And the whole point experimenting with Staff was about consuming Stability stacks with Chaos Storm. I won’t give up my gs: playing SW/Focus + Staff doesn’t give you any decent ranged damage.

fluxit.8247:

Most importantly, chaos storm + halting strike (+ idealy chaotic interruption) placed ontop of a clumped up group of casters will interrupt, damage and apply random conditions.

That was the whole point of having a staff, and I’m not really impressed so far

fluxit.8247:

Furthermore, instead of empowered illusions and confounding suggestions (I think you just chose these because you want too much out of your build) I went further in the inspiration line to provide similar buffs and more.

If you even bothered to check the first build, that’s basically what I’m already playing ^^

fluxit.8247:

Personally, as a mesmer who raids with a T2 guild almost every night, I prefer to go full zerker. You seem uncomfortable with that based on the gear that you chose, but really, blink + phase retreat + distortion + not getting out of position + your team you are way more survivable than most other caster classes.

I am playing 2-6-0-6-0 in a mix of zerk and assassin gear. Some of the builds I tried have 3 jewels switched to knights for a bit more toughness to survive bigger blobs, but I’m perfectly comfortable playing zerk most of the time.

I don’t think Power Cleanse ever prioritized Immobilize, and Immobilize stacks in duration, so there is no “single stack” to remove, either it gets removed or not.

The game has been horribly laggy since the patch, so it might be just that.

Scenario: Gunnar’s Hold WvW. Currently fighting Abaddon’s Mouth and Drakkar Lake, facing guild groups running 20+ and zone blobs with 40-80.

First iteration: let me try to switch from Sword/Focus to Staff so I can help eat away some Stability stacks from the enemy.
The build was based on what I was previously running, switching only the Glamours cooldown for the Focus traits.
I really missed the focus pull, but Chaos Storm seems to work decently on the enemy clusters to eat away stacks of stability and make the work easier for my group.

Second iteration: let me see if Halting Strike is better than Empowered Illusions – build
Feels like you are giving up some of your controlled burst (iZerker) to get some random burst on Chaos Storm and a chance for a decent controlled damage on interrupts with iWave. It’s a pretty balanced tradeoff.

Third iteration: let me try something with Boontiful Interruption and Chaotic Interruption
Sounds like a frankenstein-ish build – a weird hybrid Phantasm/Mantra/Interrupt sniper build.

Why 1 in Dueling? Because I can’t play without Vigor, my fault.
5 in Inspiration for the phantasm damage and to keep the handy condi removal and mantra healing.
6 in Chaos to get Boontiful Interruption and Chaotic Interruption (and blink cooldown is always nice).
Why not Mantra of Distraction? Two reasons: it’s a long cooldown and wouldn’t syngergize much with Restorative Mantras, and I don’t think it would make much difference in a group setup (unless I become really lucky and I start finding clustered groups of enemies without stability that are casting something at the same time).

I wasn’t really impressed with the rate of interrupts by random chance with Chaos Storm.
I felt switching BI for Chaotic Dampening was a better choice, because I had Chaos Storm ready on most spikes.

It’s hard to tell the effectiveness of CI in the middle of a zerg fight, and BI didn’t impress me, so that got me thinking that Confounding Suggestions might have been a better option since:

• it’s a 50% chance on every daze instead of random chance that a daze will strike while someone is casting something (still talking about Chaos Storm here)
• to get it, you also get Dazzling that could be very nice on the spike
• while condi removal is widespread in big groups, AoE stun removal is harder to come by, so a Stun might be more effective than Immobilize

Fourth iteration: getting something from both worlds
The build takes both Halting Strike and Empowered Illusions along with Confounding Suggestions and the good stuff in dueling (maybe I’ll switch Protected Mantras to Deceptive Evasion to take advantage of a quick Distortion) and the condi removal on healing.

I plan on testing this last variation tomorrow, maybe messing a bit with the jewels to get a few more HP.

Any other ideas and toughts?
Any other mesmer out there trying to play something else than the focus-party-shatter meta? :P

(I have some footage from the third iteration, I might try to upload it tomorrow)

Murksler.5261:

This change brings more blob, more caster standoffs and less meele fights. Capturing objects will not be possible anymore, only if you heavily outnumbers you enemys you’re able to capture a keep.

Strange, I’ve seen people pushing through chokes yesterday, maybe if you wait for the CC to disappear your pushes will be more successful…

Bubi.5237:

Menaka.5092:

you mean like there’s ledges close to hills and to the northern towers in the current borderlands map? Shocking.

I don’t remember legdes next to the gate on the current maps, neither ledge-stairs from where the falling equals death.

All the cata spots in Hills have a ledge behind them. Cata spots on both northern towers have ledges close by.

Bubi.5237:

(…) 20 omega golems need “a few gold” (~50g), “some supply” (let’s say.. 3k?), and they can be destroyed by good defensive siege placement/scouting.
An event which occurs every 3 hours, where a big blob can just split up to 3×20 man groups, use the cannon, blob up again and take towers (no gate), take keeps easier (no outer gates, so supply needed only for inner), so it gives little chance for defending.

(…) ‘Cos during the night, when your server has 5 ppl defending against the enemy’s 40 man nightcap, the cannon will make your defense easier, yupyup.

If you have 5 players you can’t defend from a 60 man blob even if they faceroll on the gates swimming in burning oil. Your logic is faulty.

The wild population imbalance is a different problem, that we don’t know if ANet has bothered to tackle, even if everyone on the WvW forums is asking for them to fix it since 2012.

Bubi.5237:

Menaka.5092:

Bubi.5237:

Keep Lord, which are.. “fun to fight”.
’Cos wvw players love to fight npcs, yup.

no, we don’t like fighting npcs
but when we are defending against bigger numbers, we’d rather have useful NPCs to our side, instead of wooden puppets that will die in seconds

As long as the boss scales, its not THAT bad.. but instead of making pve-bosses, I would like to see defensive layout, where the defensive players have some advantage.. like you can shoot them from the wall while they cant you? On the video I saw the same walls as now, providing close to zero defense for defenders.

One of the screenshot showed that there’s walls all around the gate and you can hit attackers from every position up there.

A position where you cannot be hit back (like arrow carts on south hills for example) has no counterplay and it’s stupid and pointless.

Bubi.5237:

If the attacker have harder time when equal numbers are fighting, they’ll bring more numbers. That’s all.

To bring more numbers they’ll need to move people from somewhere else, so you can strike there instead.

I already stated that the population imbalance is a different problem and we don’t know yet if ANet has even bothered to fix it. They talked about Alliances during the CDI, but they didn’t say anything about that after it. Maybe they are working on those, maybe they are working on something different, maybe not. We don’t know. But it’s a different problem and changing the map design won’t solve it.

Bubi.5237:

I don’t remember calling that event PVE event, I was calling the map one with filled pve. NPC sentry golems (shrine reward), NPC lords with pve mechanics, jumping-puzzle-like jumppads, etc.

maybe you didn’t notice, but there’s PVE in the current maps as well
if we can’t have “less” of it, I’ll take “better” PVE over the clumsy current IA…

Bubi.5237:

Menaka.5092:

And they are trying to split the blobs, by making it impossible to cover all the objectives with one single group.

I’m not saying they succeeded, but the ideas are sound, and I hope there will be some form of beta testing before the release.

With the towers-blocking-the-path change (which is actually an interesting one), dunno if you can split the blob up better or they’ll just blob themselves past the tower THEN split up, or just continue blobbing as always.

And don’t forget, there was a reason to take out the Orbs from normal maps.
Afaik it was the FLYING/FASTRUNNING ppl.. They’re still here, so I don’t know what to think about it.

There’s no Orbs in the current map design as far as we know. And, as you admit, we don’t know enough to tell if the zerg-splitting will work.
So, what’s all the fuss?

I’ll give ANet the benefit of the doubt at least until the beta.

So weird… for example, you can blink on the roof on Lake camp, but not on Vale camp. Double standards…

Bubi.5237:

After watching “the video” (the presentation they streamed), for me it seems like an eotm +skyhammer+pve combo.

Ledges to knock enemies off.

you mean like there’s ledges close to hills and to the northern towers in the current borderlands map? Shocking.

Bubi.5237:

Automated Turrets which shoots you.

without playing the map, the effectiveness of the turrets remains to be seen: I hope those are not as annoying as the cannons in EOTM

Bubi.5237:

Big Boom Cannon which destroys every enemy outer gate (basically opening every tower), so you can capture everything faster when you have superior numbers (timezones for da win!).

because a zone blob building 20 omega golems couldn’t wipe your borderlands clear, right?

instead, it looks like this event requires a lot of coordination: there’s 3 collection points to camp, and 4 towers and 3 keeps to conquer as quickly as possible after the event is completed, that means you’ll probably need a lot of smaller, coordinated groups, instead of a huge blob of mindless zerglings spamming staff 1: scary, uh?

Bubi.5237:

Keep Lord, which are.. “fun to fight”.
’Cos wvw players love to fight npcs, yup.

no, we don’t like fighting npcs
but when we are defending against bigger numbers, we’d rather have useful NPCs to our side, instead of wooden puppets that will die in seconds

Bubi.5237:

The map is nice, it’s beautiful, but.. I fear the mechanics will make it close to unplayable for me

your opinion is based on like… 2 minutes of random footage?

ANet said they wanted to make defending more interesting (and hopefully, more rewarding); I think the design shows it. Choke points, powerful mechanics for the defending forces holding the shrines around the keep (improved mobility and stealth) and defending NPCs that can actually make a difference in a equal-numbers fight.

Calling the “Big Boom Cannon” a “PVE event” is just plain ridicolous: there will be players from all the factions trying to win the event (by killing each other, mainly, I guess, since killing a player damages the enemy AND gives you a point), and you’ll need to decide how many players have there and how many to have close to the towers and keeps for a quick cap. Endless possibilities of taking advantage of the enemy hard work…

And they are trying to split the blobs, by making it impossible to cover all the objectives with one single group.

I’m not saying they succeeded, but the ideas are sound, and I hope there will be some form of beta testing before the release.

Traits

• Increase the damage contribution from Wastrel’s Punishment to 7 or 10% (or rework it)
• Bring back Power Block as it was designed, before the thieves cried themselves to sleep (for 1 day)
• Make Mantra mastery also reduce the cast time by .5 seconds
• Make Protected Mantras grant protection for 3 seconds with 3 second ICD or Aegis for 1 second with 3 seconds ICD
• Fix Duelist’s Discipline so that the phantasm actually uses the increased range
• Lower the cooldown on Mirror of Anguish to 20 or 30 seconds (it’s a master trait with VERY good alternatives)
• Chaotic Interruption: make it apply Immobilize, Chill and Slow (grand master that only works on an interrupt!)
• Increase the duration for Vengeful Images or make it permanent like it was before, it’s not like our phantasms have huge health pools anyway
• Increase the health bonus for Persisting Images to 50 or 100%
• Warden’s Feedback: fix the reflect height on Temporal Curtain
• Restorative Illusions: make it provide AoE heal centered on the mesmer, double the amount healed (it’s a grand master trait in a traitline completely not involved with shatter builds, I want a really good reason to take it)
• Buff Shattered Strength to grant at least 2 stacks per illusion. You’re sacrificing your resources, and it’s a big investment in the traitline. Idea for a rework: grant 1 stack on shatter and 2 stacks for each clone that actually lands the shatter.
• Make Dazzling Glamours pulse 1s blind every second inside our glamours
• Lower Illusionary Invigoration cooldown to 40s
• Remove the ICD from Blinding Befuddlement

In need of rework: Rending Shatter (way too weak), Sharper Images and Confusing Combatants (why are these in a crit/crit damage/phantasm traitline?), Blurred Inscriptions and Cleansing Inscriptions (along with a full Signet rework), Chaotic Revival (meh), Retaliatory Demise (more meh), Bountiful Disillusionment (SUPER meh), Phantasmal Strength (why is it in this traitline?!), Vigorous Revelation (boon sharing mesmer is not a thing, don’t try to force it), Temporal Enchanter (this is tricky: I would want for Feedback to last longer, but I would want for Null Field to be more efficient – stripping more boons per pulse, and for Portal to have an increased number of charges…), Shattered Conditions (very nice trait, but requires so much investment in the wrong traitline), Disruptor’s Sustainment (possibly the worst designed trait in game), Phantasmal Haste (move it to some phantasm oriented traitline like Dueling or Inspiration and increase the effect to 50%), Imbued Diversion (base diversion should be AoE)

Is there anything that would make you stop playing Mesmer? If you’ve stopped what would draw you back?

The day I wouldn’t be able to provide any utility anymore to my WvW guild, I would stop playing mesmer (and probably the game).

What has damaged your faith in the devs? Is there any faith remaining? What would have to happen to earn back your trust? Again, please no general statements like “a lot of nerfs.”

What has damaged my faith in the devs is not the number of nerfs, but the quality of the nerfs we got: many of them were way too punishing (double nerf on Glamours/Confusion, double nerf on Blurred Frenzy, nerf to Power block against thieves), some others denoted that ANet doesn’t really understand the class (nerf to Sword Swap, focus pull, etc), while some of the buffs are – frankly – quite silly, like the buff to confusion in a power/zerk dominated PVE.

What is your one (reasonable) Mesmer wish?

Wellllll they could start fixing all our bugs and useless skills/traits… wait, you said “reasonable”.
I “reasonably” hope the specialization will bring some changes to the core mechanics so we won’t be so dependent on our illusions.

What do you feel the Mesmer is currently lacking ATM?

Someone in ANet that actually understands the class.

What game mode (PvP, WvW, PvE Open World/Dungeons) do you feel Mesmer currently excels in the most? Least?

Mesmer doesn’t excel in any game mode.

The utility we bring in PvP is often not enough to justify bringing a mesmer in the team.

Our WvW contribution is severely limited because our core mechanic (clones/phantasms/shatters) doesn’t work in big groups.

In dungeons, our dps is disappointing, although we have decent support (mostly for some fractals).

Without reworking anything, what minor adjustments would you make to any of our weapons/utilities/traits to make them more viable?

Weapons

• Reduce the number of hits on blurred frenzy (maybe even upgrading the damage), so we don’t kill ourselves with retaliation
• Increase phantasmal warlock projectile speed by 20 to 30%. Make the phantasm spawn and attack from max range.
• Reduce the cooldown on chaos storm and chaos armor
• Reduce the pre-cast and cast time of Confusing Images
• Fix temporal curtain swiftness application, could it be so hard?
• Lower Into the void cooldown to 0.5 seconds
• Increase phantasmal mage projectile speed by 50% and reduce the skill cooldown to 20 seconds to bring it in line with the other phantasms

Sword 3 needs a rework to function as a proper gap closer/immobilize without relying on a clone that will be obliterated in any group fight.

Skills

• Lower the cooldown for arcane thievery and fix the skill so it doesn’t get obstructed by small pebbles or things like that
• Lower the cooldown for Null Field to 35s, lower its duration to 3 seconds and increase it’s efficiency, stripping 2 random boons/condis per pulse (6 total)
• Give a proper range indicator to portal
• Increase duration (4s) and radius (600) for Power Break
• Increase radius (600) for Power Cleanse
• Lower Mantra of Distraction cooldown to 25s base
• Lower Phantasmal Defender cooldown to 25s to bring it in line with other phantasms
• Lower cast time on Mass Invisibility and increase the player limit to 20 (it’s an elite after all)

I’m sorry, but I can’t think of anything short of a rework to fix our signets and mimic.

(continues)

Location: North Italy
Time and date of incident (plus time zone): every day, starting from 19:00 GMT
Game World: Gunnar’s Hold
Brief description of what you’re seeing: severe packet loss (people blinking around, skills not activating, chat delay, etc).

The game is completely unplayable, again, even dodging make me blinking around like crazy.

Location: North Italy
Time and date of incident (plus time zone): every day, starting from 19:00 GMT
Game World: Gunnar’s Hold
Brief description of what you’re seeing: severe packet loss (people blinking around, skills not activating, chat delay, etc).

The game is completely unplayable, again.

                                0/  25 =  0%   |
 13   30ms     0/  25 =  0%     0/  25 =  0%  mno-b2-link.telia.net [213.248.88.233] 
                                2/  25 =  8%   |
 14   46ms     2/  25 =  8%     0/  25 =  0%  prs-bb3-link.telia.net [62.115.135.88] 
                                0/  25 =  0%   |
 15  161ms    13/  25 = 52%    11/  25 = 44%  ash-bb3-link.telia.net [80.91.252.36] 
                                0/  25 =  0%   |
 16  173ms     3/  25 = 12%     1/  25 =  4%  dls-b21-link.telia.net [62.115.137.45] 
                                0/  25 =  0%   |
 17  ---      25/  25 =100%    23/  25 = 92%  ncsoft-ic-307708-dls-b21.c.telia.net.10.115.62.in-addr.arpa [62.115.10.106] 
                                0/  25 =  0%   |
 18  162ms     2/  25 =  8%     0/  25 =  0%  64.25.32-9.ncsoft.com [64.25.32.9] 
                                0/  25 =  0%   |
 19  ---      25/  25 =100%    23/  25 = 92%  64.25.32-26.ncsoft.com [64.25.32.26] 
                                0/  25 =  0%   |
 20  166ms     2/  25 =  8%     0/  25 =  0%  64.25.33-1.ncsoft.com [64.25.39.1] 

telia getting better and better, maybe if they reach 100% packet loss you’ll consider DROPPING YOUR PEERING WITH THEM…

Carighan.6758:

Say every time target player uses an ability which moves them, they get moved the wrong direction instead. I think those thieves will be a weeeeee bit frustrated. :P

that would have been an awesome mechanic for confusion

Just the other day it was mentioned how “under-represented” mesmers were in TPVP…
meh.

Actually, I think they started working on the “weakest” classes first.

The first specialization they announced is Ranger, they confirmed Necro GS and they showed Mesmer and Engineer in the video, that makes me think that those specializations are the ones that they had already sorted out.

Or maybe it’s just clever hype manipulation…

Fay.2357:

Menaka.5092:

What if we get secondary effects on our main hand skills? Like, for example, if you have a shield in off hand, your Sword third autoattack applies quickness for 1 second (1 second of slow on scepter AA?), or something like that?

That sounds like a trait to me, not an innate mechanic.

“Recharge shield skills 20% faster and…”, yeah. Could work as a trait.

Fay.2357:

Warlord of Chaos.7845:

Who said shield couldn’t be mainhand? We use GS as a ranged weapon, why cant shield be mainhand?

Well, there’s the teaser video showing mesmer using an offhand shield…

Maybe that was a left-handed mesmer!

I’ll sit here, waiting for them to introduce HAMMER mesmer…

Make it the default so we can remove 4 stacks of stability AoE with IP + 3 clones shatter \o/

(I think that would be a bit OP in sPVP – wouldn’t really apply in WvW where our clones last a second at best)

https://i.imgur.com/Im2jSjw.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/sSiDDyd.jpg

I don’t have my most recent screenshots on hand, but you can check my videos. Charr mesmers are the best.

(I love my Sylvari as well, tho)

Me Games Ma.8426:

My list of additional possibilities:

• We could get 4-5 shield skills we can swap like utilities. (so we get 2 at a time)

This would be interesting (altough not “just as good”).

What if we get secondary effects on our main hand skills? Like, for example, if you have a shield in off hand, your Sword third autoattack applies quickness for 1 second (1 second of slow on scepter AA?), or something like that?

Location: North Italy
Time and date of incident (plus time zone): every day, starting from 19:00 GMT
Game World: Gunnar’s Hold
Brief description of what you’re seeing: severe packet loss (people blinking around, skills not activating, chat delay, etc).

The game is completely unplayable, again.

Bumping this post because we finally managed to publish the fourth lesson:
Hit ’em when and where it hurts

Could be useful for all the newcomers after the nice discount ANet offered during the weekend

Lovestruck Protector of course

Location: North Italy
Time and date of incident (plus time zone): every day, starting from 19:00 GMT
Game World: Ring of Fire
Brief description of what you’re seeing: severe packet loss (people blinking around, skills not activating, chat delay, etc).

The game is completely unplayable and, from what the official support tells me, ANet will not do anything about this. I quote from the response I got from Support:

“As much as we want to help resolve this issue for you, we simply do not have any control over this type of problem. At best, we have limited control over the data once it reaches the Guild Wars 2 servers. The problem is that this packet loss is happening prior to that event. As such, we simply have no direct or even indirect control over that data and how it’s transferred. That’s the sole responsibility of your ISP, which is why you are paying for that service.”

So, contrary to what has been stated before in this thread, it is my understanding that this problem will not be solved.

(Please note that the packet loss is happening not on my provider’s network, but on Telia network at the hop where it connects to NCsoft network.)

Our goal is to continue to encourage organized large groups while giving small, tactical groups the necessary tools to put a dent into larger mobs of less-skilled players

Devon Carver, WvW design lead, 5 June 2013

I think you’re doing good, at least for the “encourage large groups” part.

(for those of you that care about WvW, I suggest not to follow that link: you’ll find only pain there)

Anyone gonna stream/record this?

AnniMira.2506:

Someone mentioned Ether Feast is our only viable health skill. For last days I have stared how this skill works in practice. In WvW, the health may drop fast – I have soldier gear + dolyak runes for their toughness. The same has happened in PvE too.

Typical case is that the health drops under 20%, and Ether Feast increases the health only to 25%. E.g., we had 10v10 fight in a camp and I could not fight because I had to try avoid the enemy and use all my invisibility skills while waiting the EF to come out of cooldown.

In the same camp fight I had targeted an ele. Someone else did damage to ele. Ele’s health dropped to 90% but immediately and fast raised back to 100%. This repeated every two seconds or so.

In some other random 1v1 fight, ele did not loose health at all. Health bar was solid 100%. At least I tried to do damage.

I think you posted in the wrong thread.

So let me get this straight: ether feast heals – without any clone – about 5-6k, and you say it’s 5% of your total health? That would put your max health at around 100k

Another problem with PVT (Soldier) gear is that you have a lot of power, but no precision or ferocity, so you basically hit like a wet noodle, and elementalists (I assume he was running dagger/dagger?) have lots of regen/healing to compensate for the small health pool.

If you want you can PM me your build (gear, traits, etc) or contact me in game and we can try to work on it

trooper.2650:

Menaka.5092:

Loved that you showed a lot of weapon combinations, but you really need to work on the stomping :P

Ahaha, if I were to draw some conclusions from this short montage I would defenitely say the same, no doubt. It’s actually rather peculiar that there is no a single safe stomp in those clips. But I can guarantee it’s a coincidence, I ususally know how to stomp properly.

The thing is that I always hope there is no need for F4 in a 1v1, when they clearly have no chance to recover from the defeat. Surely, the fight at the camp with ranger and guardian was a little too messy, but in the end I made it ^^

:D
better safe than sorry

witcher.3197:

Menaka.5092:

Just ignore metabattle for WvW/Zerg. The builds posted there are horrible and totally unworth playing.

What kind of fights are you facing in WvW? Roaming? Zerg? Organized groups?

WvW roaming is admittedly the weaklink but mostly regarding size and not quality. For Zergs keep 1 thing in mind – that section is displaying builds that work in a standard WvW environment, not organized fights at the obsidian sanctum because every guild has their own variants they are running and they are probably the 1% of the population of players who play WvW.

So for large scale battles, this site is the most suitable for him I’d say.

I had to realize long ago that wvw players have no intention to help the community grow, but if you do, you could always propose changes if you feel like something is off. Because it’s a wiki afterall.

The builds proposed for WvW/Zerg on metabattle are… wrong. There’s a interrupt build rated as “great” for zergs (!), and there’s a “support” build rated as “good”. Both have sub-optimal choices in traits and gear.

Will those builds “work” in a zerg? Sure! If you have enough people even 0/0/0/0/0 will work in a zerg.

I’m sorry, but I have serious doubts about the transparency of metabattle admins from what I’ve read on Reddit and on other forums and from what I’ve seen.
So I won’t waste my time on it.