Guild Wars 2

akanibbles.6237:

are rangers now viable?

I use mine as a bank alt. I’d say it’s viable for that purpose.

Hey the next evolution of iWarden brokeness isn’t due for months. Be patient.

I don’t think ANet has the technology to track this sort of stuff, but I would really love an improved achievement system with this kind of objectives

Another tricky one to achieve would be: interrupt 1/2/3/4/5 targets with the same skill!

Shellfishly bumping by announcing our second video! Enjoy

Still not fixed, but at least acknowledged by a dev.

What’s the purpose of this? Just sticking with the commander won’t help much.

• you don’t provide much utility: immobilize from sword, timewarp and null field, very weak boon sharing (that other classes can do a lot better with a lot less investment in utilities/traits/gear)
• about null field: there’s no point in prolonging it’s duration, no group will stand inside it’s area of effect for that long. On top of that, Null field will cover “better” fields like chill/water for blasts for a longer time and you don’t want that
• mixed stats gear: why? only power/crit/ferocity makes sense in big groups, conditions will be removed very fast anyway
• no -condi duration from food or runes
• no stun breakers: you really want either blink or mantra of concentration
• very low damage
• mirror is worse than ether feast in pretty much any wvw scenario
• sigil of water is terrible, really: your group doesn’t need that, you don’t need that
• I never tested sigil of renewal but I suspect it’s the same
• if you want another on kill sigil, I would go for sigil of stamina instead of luck

As Doiid mentioned, and from my personal experience, at the moment, only shatter makes sense for the frontline: it provides one of the best utilities in game (boon stripping) and gives you better survival overall. If you want to be a little more tanky you can even go 4/0/4/0/6 (you lose a bit of boon removal potential) or 0/2/4/2/6 (but you lose your boon removal potential).

Edit: I don’t think you are “running supportive”; with this build you are at best useless and at worst a liability to your group. Mesmer support is not about boon sharing (guardians) or healing (guardians, eles, warriors). Mesmer support is boon stripping, veil, portal, timewarp, focus pulls, sword/staff dazes with longer duration or interrupts that immobilize keeping people away from the regroups…

frifox.5283:

Focus = torch?

Not equal, but I’d say they are in the same ballpark.

(and I still think 1s cd for Into the void is too much)

Xaurniven.2065:

Maybe make it so that Mesmers would be able to be with the Mele Train in a ZvZ just for the fun of it ^^

I played WvW frontline shatter builds for months. We can already do that, but we are not as effective as we could be, in that role: we don’t have a 2nd option for melee weapons (would love to use that Entropy I have sitting in my bank…) and our illusions are too fragile and shatter playstyle requires too much “setup” to work properly in that setting.

Anyway, I think we could work so much better as a proper interdiction class, with access to abilities used to mass disable the adversaries and punish them for their mistakes… too bad, the focus of the design team is stuck on sPVP with maybe a bit of PVE here ad there and nobody cares about WvW.

storiessave.3807:

Like someone else said, it’s pretty much 50/50 on whether or not iWarden attacks now. I actually had better odds pre-feature patch “fix,” honestly. It’s even more buggy than it was.

It makes the phantasm unpredictable and pretty useless. I really hate using focus now, since there’s now only one useful skill on it, but unfortunately Temporal Curtain is just too useful in a lot of situations to completely give up. Still feels like a wasted weapon slot sometimes, though, since most of our damage comes from phantasms, and our focus phantasm won’t do damage >.>.

Can we get our iWarden back, please?

I really hate using focus now torch, since there’s now only one useful skill on it, but unfortunately Temporal Curtain The Prestige is just too useful in a lot of situations to completely give up. Still feels like a wasted weapon slot sometimes, though, since most of our damage comes from phantasms, and our focus torch phantasm won’t do damage

See what I did there? He He He.
:(

Do I smell pay2win ?

Still not fixed.

[So] Shellfish is an international WvW guild focused on having fun and good fights currently settled on Far Shiverpeaks/EU.

The guild was started from a small group of players that were tired of feeling the WvW raid like a second job: GW2 is a game and we want to have fun!

Everyone in our core group share this feeling and we want to grow the guild by recruiting like-minded players: we want you to represent [So] because you enjoy playing with your guildmates and – of course – have challenging fights in WvW.

We raid three days per week from about 20:00 to 23:00 GMT. We focus on guild groups and all the blobs we can take. Attacking towers and keeps for us is only a means to an end: get fights. If we find any guild interested in it, we organize GvGs.

What are we looking for?

We are looking for players that want to enjoy WvW in a group and have lots of good fights and fun
Voice comms are required.
We don’t have strict age requirements, but maturity (as in: being able to behave as an adult) is a requirement.

What can we offer?

A nice, relaxed and fun environment and one of the most focused groups you’ll ever find, when we start to fight.
Sounds impossible? Check our awesome fights and our silly moments on Youtube or just try us! Ask one of the leaders, join TS and tag along during our raids!

We like theorycrafting and testing out stuff.
We DON’T like drama: we are adults and we can sort out our problems like adults.
We’re not much into PVE, but we’re sacrificing ourselves to level up the Guild Hall.
A few players in [So] are really into tPVP as well.

Are you recruiting?

Yes. We are looking mostly for Guardians and Elementalists, but we might consider other classes.

If you are interested and want more info, you can try to contact one of the leaders in game: GeorgeisLucas.5340, ThatJapaneseGuy.6381, Menaka.5092, Ntina.4901

frifox.5283:

You can get an extra mantra charged and get +4% dmg without the utility slotted in:

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7XH96tfBZY

That one has been there for ages, I think the first time I randomly triggered it was after the patch in which they changed the borderlands map. I was sure it had been fixed…

I don’t play PU (altough I often have torch, decoy and mass invisibility for roaming), but I know many PvP/WvW mesmers do, probably because it’s the best balance between defense and offense.

I don’t like it, I find it extremely cheesy, but I don’t think it should be nerfed: I would prefer to have more viable builds so people can start playing those alongside PU/Power.

The last patch has been really disappointing from this point of view:

• Focus still broken
• no fix for Illusionary Elasticity
• Power Block nerfed after a few hours from his appearance in game
• Triumphant Distortion with ICD
• Maim the Disillusioned underwhelming
• Disruptor Sustainment and Bountiful Disillusionment just plain bad

How can we start adopting different builds if the rest of our traits is a mess and half of our traits and skills are bugged? And shall we start talking about how bad are things like Scepter autoattack or torch phantasm? Or about how we don’t have any option for large scale fights (aside for dropping our veil and get out of the way)?

The problem is not PU, the problem is that there’s not much else to work with.

Conditions don’t work very much in zergs due to the massive amount of condition cleansing.

On top of that, landing a shatter in a zerg can prove quite the feat, since our clones are dying like flies, so the torment on shatter trait won’t work.

The torment from scepter only afflicts 1 target. You can go with runes/sigils to reapply more torment, but the condition cleansing I mentioned earlier can easily handle that.

TL;DR: conditions don’t work in ZvZ

Lishtenbird.2814:

Following this thread, added:

37. Phantasms and Gates.

• May not attack gates (both in PvE and WvW) – just spawn and do nothing.
• May spawn on the other side of the gate.
• As a result, may switch targets and attack enemy players/NPCs since they’re already inside.
• As a result, may get killed instead of staying on the right side of the gate and attacking it.

Not sure if I’ve seen this behaviour prior to the patch, but I believe yes.

I can confirm this at least for iWarden since the nefarious 8 December patch.

I reported this more than a week ago to exploits@arena.net but still hasn’t been fixed. Reporting it again on this forum to see if this changes.

Warriors having Healing Signet equipped and enabling the Deep Strike trait will get the Signet of Might effect (icon, stats, etc) “for free”.

You can only remove the effect by equipping Signet of Might and then switching to something else.

“Winning” in WvW hasn’t very much to do with fights and has very much to do with coverage. So gold servers would probably win anyway.

It’s one of the new patch “find the small differences” feature

Safari.3021:

geist.3980:

badges fall like rain in the spring, the only people who will actually have to work to collect them are the pve only players who don’t stockpile thousands of the useless things.

I find most PVE players are joining “Edge of the Avoiding the Enemy While Capping Npc Guarded Special Objective Mists” or EAEWCNGSOM for short.

:°D
it has quite a ring to it

bloodlust, force, fire, air, accuracy, energy… didn’t check the might on crit yet, but looks interesting.

Dammerung.6419:

I created a second mesmer right before the patch hit. I tried to struggle through leveling in PVE, but it was painful to say the least. So I ended up going to edge of the mists. It was like a 24/7 karma train. Just hop on a tag and go. I got about 20 levels this weekend alone, with a lot of gold and karma! And it was surprisingly fun. The zerg is a friendly bunch even though we were pv-door the entire time. Just make sure to keep up the chatter in chat, and the time will pass easily enough.

Give it a shot!

I can confirm that Edge of the Mist – altough it is a total failure from a PvP point of view – it’s perfect for farming experience, karma, gold and wvw ranks.

skcamow.3527:

Besides the obvious thing I won’t call attention to

:°D

I bet we now have a proper fix incoming (unlike iWarden/IE fixes)

I think it’s very hard to answer this question, first of all because WvW means a lot of different playgrounds: are you roaming solo? With a small group? With an organized group (20-30)? Following a commander with the zerg (40+)?

For each environment you have multiple possible roles, so answering can get quite complicated.

I tested a few things since the patch.

For small group I’m playing what I was playing before the patch: 4-4-0-0-6 (domi I-IX, duel IV-X, illusion I-III-XI) sw/torch and gs with a mix of pvt and berserker gear, traveler runes, blink, decoy and mantra of resolve or arcane thievery.

I also tested the torment on shatter trait, but I’m bad at conditions. The build was 2-4-2-0-6 (clone cripple and conditions on death, clone on dodge) with a mix of rabid and dire gear, scepter/pistol+staff. I didn’t like it but I managed to kill things. I’ll give it a second chance.

For big organized groups I played 6-2-6-0-0 (power block with sw/focus+staff, confounding suggestions with sw/sw+staff: hard to tell which one is better) or one of my very tanky frontline shatter builds (4-4-0-0-6 or 4-0-4-0-6 or 0-2-4-2-6). For a “backline killer” role I would switch to a hybrid phantasm+shatter 4-4-0-0-6 build (domi I-III, duel II-IX, illusion I-III/VIII-XI) with sw/pistol and gs.

For commanding a zerg (mostly Eotm, but sometimes also in the borderlands) I played 0-0-4-4-6 (chaos V-X, inspiration IV-X, illusions I or VI, VIII, XI) with a mix of soldier and knights gear, sw/focus+staff, using mantra of concentration, mantra of resolve and veil (or portal or null field, or feedback).

calavel.6249:

Your skills only change if you go under the surface. As long as you stay on the surface of the water (where your skills are disabled), the mantras stay the way they are. But yeah, it sucks. I would like not to be forced to run the exact same skill setup under and above water if I use mantras.

MSFone.3026:

We need a trait to shorten charge time significantly, or just have it shortened baseline.

They should get rid of Furious Interruption and replace it with 2s quickness on completing a charge. Keep the cooldown 15s. That way you get a quick charge as a reward for completing a slow charge, or you can just spend it on some quick auto-attacks or a phantasm.

what about each mantra you cast shortens the cast time of the next one by 1s ?

I think the changes to runes and sigils will affect the meta way more than the change to critdmg/ferocity… we’ll see when the patch hits the servers.

Renny.6571:

The new Dueling Grandmaster trait will be decent for zerging. The only requirement is you have to tag a lot of people with your awesome cleave atta- oh…………….

spam that staff 1!
oh……………….

All of them

selan.8354:

Ansau.7326:

selan.8354:

oh well we get bug fixes and no buffs for wvw raids, so be prepared to fullfil your veilbot and portal duty as u will never be allowed to do more than stalth your team and tw them. thats what the mesmer does, veil veil veil, portal, veil, tw, veil veil. u cant deal dmg u cant reall raid. u are standing with the caster, but u dont doe caster like aoe dmg because anet gives us ai and not aoe like a normal light armor class should have.
we are squishy half thief/half rangers pretty much…. u wanna have fun in a raid, go ele, war, guard or necro. dont go mes.

Well, we got a Gm trait that gives us 3s on ivulnerability for every kill, and with no CD. That is pretty a blast in zerg fights.

30 into dueling?im not really convinced with this one yet….. how bugged will it be? what builds will go with 30 in dueling? plus squishy….u gotta tag first in order to get the kill, so tagging is not that easy…. id rather see ip being removed and all shatters working without illusions without trait. now that would make a mes viable in zergfights

I think the only thing is try it and see how it goes… to be fair I think Illusionary Membrane looks more reliable on paper, but hey, it’s protection (that you can gain in other ways) against diversion, and we can always use more tanky gear if we go 30 in dueling…

MailMail.6534:

Illusions: Really cool! Shatters are inherently supposed to do a lot of condition dmg considering the trait line boost condition dmg soooo…about time?! I could see this wrecking faces in wvw.

maybe in roaming with some PU condition build, but for ZvZ is useless…

Leaves quite a bad taste reading that

Ross Biddle.2367:

Menaka.5092:

Pulling people off the walls requires that they are on top of the little “border” or on a ramp so they don’t find any obstacle, like this: http://i.imgur.com/ErVWjV5.png
The green “enemy” is safe, since the wall border will keep him on the wall, but you can pull the rest of them

Multiple pulls in succession will overcome the border.

I suspect it’s more connected with collision detection and physics than an intended mechanic: for example I’ve seen people shoot into the air after bouncing of the “step” on the border of the wall, and while they were in the air a second pull will pull them over the ledge, but pulling 2 times against the “step” won’t make them magically drop from the wall…

(tl:dr: it’s weird)

Pulling people off the walls requires that they are on top of the little “border” or on a ramp so they don’t find any obstacle, like this: http://i.imgur.com/ErVWjV5.png
The green “enemy” is safe, since the wall border will keep him on the wall, but you can pull the rest of them

To me, it feels like it’s very hard to fix mesmer for ZvZ.

The illusion mechanic simply doesn’t work in big groups (illusions are too fragile to function properly in a zerg environment) and we have very limited access to ground-targeted AoE, that instead is the main source damage for necros, eles and engis (and maybe we can consider warrior’s hammer stun also).

The nerf to glamour/confusion builds rendered them useless and perplexity runes have been “fixed” too, so we don’t have any other condition option for large scale fights (not that interrupt/confusion builds have ever been a serious option).

About the lockdown builds: those are too much RNG/luck based (chaos storm, procs on interrupts) to be of use: statistically speaking, you will probably cause a degree of annoyance to “someone”, but you can’t choose exactly who or when.

Mantras have been buffed, true, but the 240 radius for concentration/resolve, while it may be ok for sPVP, it’s way too short for WvW. Mantra of pain may be useful in conjunction with restorative mantras, but the long cast time make it (and all mantras in general) a big liability for the mesmer. Mantra of distraction is still single target, so it’s not really an option for a ZvZ-oriented build. Mantra of recovery is nice and works very well in conjunction with mender’s purity, but again the long cast time make it very hard to use in a zerg.

The signet heal is useless due to the fragility of our illusions.

At the moment, the only builds I can somewhat make to work are:

• shatter, played in a very “dirty” way, using one or two clones with illusionary persona and a very tanky build.
• interrupts with 30 in domination and 30 in chaos, played with double sword and staff: somewhat annoying, but the (AoE) damage is low
• hybrid phantasm/shatter for killing backliners: meant for fightning organized groups, but I need to drop all the utilities (null field, veil, portal) since I need the slots for blink, decoy and mantra of resolve. It’s pretty much useless against normal zergs.

Our beloved class, so focused on finesse and perfection of execution, struggles with fights where finesse is cast apart to leave place to brutal bloodshed. I think fixing this requires a major rework and/or maybe some new weapon options (hammer!? short/longbow? a main hand pistol with ricocheting autoattacks?).

For the moment I’m looking forward to the changes to runes/sigils and the fixes (portal range!!) to the current crippling bugs. We’ll see what the future brings…

selan.8354:

non ai aoe. thats all a i wish my mesmer had. illusions are bad in wvw raids. i want more ground target aoe. or an option to trait for a non ai heavy build. less dueling, more multitarget skills.

I feel you.

hihey.1075:

Are you Italian?

Indeed.

Everything started as an inside joke: in YaKslappers we were lamenting the lack of mesmers in our raids and on top of that, we (me and the other frontline mesmer that was playing with us, Sylvari and Asura) felt like our raid leader wasn’t giving us the proper credit for surviving in the front lines.

The solution was, of course, to create twin male Norn huge mesmers so we could be seen more.

After leveling the Norn to 80, I tought I really wanted a Charr mesmer, too, and my friend insisted on me having an Asura for WvW roaming (because of the wtf-factor of multiple Asura mesmers roaming). In the end I had to make a human one to complete the collection.

Still waiting for the next balance patch before buying proper gear for them, but the skins are pretty much ok.

• Caos Danzante (Dancing Chaos): Sylvari female, main, over 2k hours played
• Caos Graffiante (Biting Chaos): Charr female, secondary, good candidate for a commander tag (!)
• Caos Barcollante (Wobbly Chaos): Asura male, made for troll-roaming with other Asura mesmers
• Caos Rombante (Rumbling Chaos): Norn male, made for trolling our raid leader, another good candidate for a commander tag
• Caos Lampante (Flashy Chaos): Human female, made to complete the collection.

You can see more on the album

Pyroatheist.9031:

Menaka.5092:

Works as every other direct damage source

Actually…not entirely true. I’ve done extensive testing with halting strike, and I’ve failed miserably to determine an accurate way of calculating the damage. It doesn’t seem to have a direct correlation with weapon damage, nor does it have any sort of normal skill coefficient.

It is, as you said, affected by armor and protection like all other damage sources.

I didn’t test extensively, but my impression is that the base damage scales with power (including might/stacks) and is modified by crit damage and all other modifiers (vulnerability on target, for example), but with that phrase I was referring to how the damage is mitigated more than how the initial damage is calculated, sorry for the confusion

It’s the only good choice if you plan to be a fearless frontline mesmer in WvW

My videos are a bit dated, but still, probably what you’re looking for.

I’m not raiding much lately, maybe I’ll start recording some small scale…

Works as every other direct damage source, it’s affected by armor (not only toughness, but toughness + armor contribution from items) and most importantly protection.

It’s nice if you focus on interrupts, but since it’s quite hard to choose when to interrupt in a ZvZ, your mileage may vary.

Of course doesn’t proc on the blocks from scepter and sword (but it can proc from Counter Blade). It only procs on interrupting a skill, doesn’t matter the source of the interrupt (any control effect can interrupt).

Pyroatheist.9031:

Pwent.2639:

Did some section of anet see it and delete it sneaky style, or was it moved.

Deleted, and I got a warning for it.

I guess the message about a moved thread was that, then

Over 900 ranks and 83k kills spread around my characters (rank 760+ on my main), no ascended, no precursor. Best drop was from a player, not a rank chest: exotic with traveler runes that I salvaged and used for my roaming gear.

Torch makes sense if you take the trait (and lose halting strike: you won’t interrupt much anyway). Pistol is good for immobilizing (stunning) and the phantasm puts decent pressure (attack + bleeds). I would go for gs instead of staff.

Since this post has been resurrected, I’ll say something about my Evil Project™: I now have 4 level 80 mesmers and the 5th is halfway (about lv 40 now).

• Caos Danzante – Sylvari female
• Caos Rombante – Norn male (made it to troll my guild leader, I think I’ll get a commander tag on this one)
• Caos Barcollante – Asura male (“barcollante” means “wobbly” or something like that)
• Caos Graffiante – Charr female
• Caos Lampante – Human female (still level 40 or something)

I’m waiting for the next balance and sigil/runes patches to start gearing the alts up

I didn’t find my sPVP interrupt build viable in wvw for roaming, but I experimented with lockdown builds for medium/large scale with some interesting results, something like this (it’s not very polished and it’s only meant as utility for your group and/or harassing backliners).

Probably related to huge DDoS attacks that have been running on the Internet at large. I had the same problem 2 days ago, a friend of mine had the same 3 days ago. International carriers are being hit hard

this one is something I played and wasn’t too much disappointed with. It’s meant as a ranged option for group-oriented play.

At the moment, I don’t really recommend focus if you’re roaming (maybe in EOTM…), but works in groups.

Menaka.5092:

After the patch, if you spawn a iWarden on a gate in wvw, it doesn’t always attack the gate.

Another thing I noticed is that the warden now spawns behind the gate and if you switch target after the warden is spawned, it will move and attack your new target, for example siege or players inside the keep/tower, not sure if “working as intended” or another bug.

more than 2 months later, I’m still unsure about that behavior
and the phantasm is still broken

The only “good thing” about this bug is that I didn’t craft the legendary focus before it was introduced.

For my playstyle iWarden is going the way of iMage: use it as a filler if I don’t have anything better to cast, maybe I can use the phantasm for a shatter or it will randomly body-intercept a projectile.

I used to love focus, now it only makes sense for the pull (and that one has been nerfed hard, too) and the occasional swiftness (that doesn’t stack with any other swiftness source after more than a year).