Guild Wars 2

Menaka.5092:

Actually, the torch blast finisher behavior is really weird.

• Drop a field, start The Prestige inside it, walk outside the field, when you emerge from stealth the blast finisher will apply on the initial position
• Start The Prestige, stay still, drop a field on yourself, when you emerge from stealth the blast finisher will apply
• Start The Prestige, move away, drop a field on yourself, when you emerge from stealth the blast finisher will NOT apply

It behaves like it records the position for the blast finisher when you enter stealth but applies it’s effect when you exit stealth

This has been fixed in the Aug 20th patch (thank you ANet!)

Grav.3568:

- Players gain one free WXP re-spec with every 10 WXP ranks they gain.

10 feels a bit low, I would say every 30, 50 or 100.

Caliburn.1845:

-Arrowcarts are now line of sight.
-Unique skins and items attainable only in WvW.
-More attainable WvW achievements and titles.
-WvW match-ups now offer substantially greater rewards to the winner server.
-Extensive statistics tracking added to WvW. Including man-hours played by server. WvW kills by server. WvW deaths by server. Number of siege equipment deployed by server. Average player lifespan on server.

With the big issue of establishing what the reward for a winning server is.

Urrid.4593:

- Several annoying invulnerable spots near team specific borders have been tweaked.

Fizwitz.8240:

- Killing a player can only revive up to 5 people

I would say 5 people per server, considering you can have 3 way fights…

And now, my turn:

General

• a new structure has been built by the krait in the middle of the lake in every borderland: capturing the krait keep unleashes the power of the storm on it. The storm slowly destroy the walls and gates of the keep, opening it to enemy attacks and requiring constant repairs to maintain sovereignity over it. The krait keep cannot be upgraded and once completely destroyed is unavailable for an hour, while the kraits reclaim it and rebuild the walls.
• a new “fight difficulty” multiplier has been introduced: WXP and magic find for player kills will be influenced by the numerical difference of the opposing forces: a 20 man group wiping a 60 man zerg would get bonus WXP and magic find, while the 60 man zerg wiping a 20 man group would be punished, getting less than normal WXP and lower quality loot.
• team chat (/team or /t) is now readable across all borderlands and the eternal battlegrounds, messages will be prefixed with the borderland of the player that wrote the message to avoid confusion
• all projectile siege start with a finite amount of projectiles, after that amount has been used, they are disabled and require a 10 supply recharge
• supply storage in keeps is now split between inner and outer depots, inner depot(s) can contain 1/3 of total supplies, outer depots contain the rest, once the external perimeter of the keep has been breached, depots become neutral and both defenders and invaders can take supplies from there
• you can now easily spot more expert invaders: from rank 150 upwards, a medal (bronze, silver, gold, and so on) will display beside their name.
• more achievements have been added and the existing achievement rewards have been updated to reflect the effort required to get each of them

Reaching the “legend” rank in each tier (rank 120, 570 and so on) will grant new rewards:

• a new unique stomp finisher animation
• the related title: “WuhWuh Legend”, “WuhWuh Bronze Legend”, and so on
• access to a new vendor where you can exchange badges of honor for unique armor and weapon skins

New and improved commander interface:

• commander messages have a different color in team and mapchat (wvw only). Commanders also have a different cooldown trigger for the spam filter (so they can write more than 3 times in a row, for example)
• commanders can choose to join another commander, so a proper chain of command can be established
• each commander can register up to 3 players as scouts: scouts will have a simple interface to report enemy sightings, keeps and towers under attack and so on
• new map interface for commanders, bigger than the minimap, with the the reports from the scouts and tools to order where to go and what to do
• commanders can now choose to show the tag on map for everyone or only for their guild

In an effort to spread out the population and achieve better coverage for all the servers and timezones:

• on the world selection window, each player will receive a server suggestion based on server wvw populations/coverage requirements and coverage statistics from player’s past 4 weeks in wvw: he can transfer to the suggested world for a minimal fee or can choose another server for the usual fee.
• based on similar coverage statistics, Guilds can apply for guild transfers: if applicable, they will receive a special discount for up to 50 members if they move to a suggested server. All guild upgrades, influence and merits are transfered aswell.

(ANet, I spent hours writing this, make me happy, make it happen!)

Solstice.1097:

im trying to decide between knights, soldiers, or clerics armor stats

im also trying to decide between melandru or dolyak runes.

im looking for max survivability first, then I’ll start easing into some DPS from there until I find the right mix.

Try with the jewels in the mists (sPVP), you won’t have perfect matching with the stats you can get in WVW, but you can get an idea of if/how it works.

about the runes, I’d go melandru for survivability

Other than the set I’m wearing, I have 2×18 slot invisible bags on me (3 sets, a bunch of different jewels that I can switch on different situations, about a dozen weapons) and about 1.5 bank tabs (condition gear)…

Mate, why are you obsessed with this question?
At the moment, we shine for our utility slots, because veil, portal and timewarp are very powerful options for commanders in organized groups.

Go on guardian forums and ask what are the pros of the guardian if you take away his support, or the pros of warriors if you take away their damage… mesmer in the current meta is mostly a utility profession: ANet can surely make us better in some aspects, but don’t be obsessed because you’re not a guardian or a warrior (or roll one if it is so important for you)

Bero.2193:

Hey, we enjoyed the fights vs Dius tonight we ran 14 guys when we met you, each time I thought yes! a good fight halfway through AG zerg swings by for bum action on you (sorry) eventually we left it got far too blobby for us. Met TDA when we had 12 guys had a couple of good fights with them then got violated by Yak when we were cata’ing briar on JS BL, which was followed by more fights with Yak which were good. Eventually met XxX but we were down to 7 guys by then with maybe 1 or 2 pug followers, wish I had more guys to have given you a proper fight. CRUX is new so bare with us in fighting terms, you may get a great fight from us sometimes, others not so much its all practice for us so keep coming at us no matter if you outman us or not.

The last one was really good, very nice movement and organization!
/salute to you [CRUX] hope to see you again in the battlefield!

Azo.5860:

Menaka.5092:

Azo.5860:

i know how mesmer is various but it lacks of focusing,
…

If your guild doesn’t use veils or portals in GvG I don’t know what to say to you.
GL HF?

Probably u dont understand i mean with focusing..
what are mesmers in role for? what are they pros with compare to other classes?? except being slot (as veil, portal,tw)

i am complaining about mesmer class..

*it doesnt any sense to me what u wanted to tell..

That, I can see.

I didn’t say we can be better than eles at healing (maybe we can in some very specific situations, but not on GvG), or more tanky than a warrior or a guardian.

I did say that, on top of our specific, strategic and tactical skills (veil and portal, and maybe we can include mass invisibility and timewarp), we are flexible enough to fill the spots that the team needs to be filled: we can be in the frontlines or in the backlines or even go behind the enemy and harass their healers and backliners.

And I think that flexibility is a strength, not a weakness.

We cannot guess how we’ll be nerfed in the next patch, coming next tuesday…

Same sigil? Same stats? Same traits?

Dranul.2094:

… you need to understand the concept, we play for FUN and FIGHTS. We aren’t going to PvD objectives for points… when their is a lot of French in the zone to fight. We saved that garrison for Gandara Several times kicking you out, was great fun. We deliberately LOOK FOR fights

…

We live for the fights, we don’t care about defeats, we don’t care about fighting an entire zone, which we did several times. We don’t approve of guilds refusing to fight and running away, so ye whenever we can TUP will get in your guilds and zergs faces for the action and the fun. It’s why its a game, an action packed game. We don’t play for the PPT or the win at the end of the week, or to hit empty objectives – sure we will take things if no zerg to be found, or to give us something to defend, thus forcing the zerg to come karma train.

That’s the spirit! Much love from YaKs <3

(there were too few of us on today to fight effectively the zergs from both AG and JS on Gandara border, but we had some nice fights, including a few huge battles in Garrison)

Kill shot is a powerful strike with a long cast and a very prominent visual cue, learn2play issue. /thread

Azo.5860:

i know how mesmer is various but it lacks of focusing,
…

If your guild doesn’t use veils or portals in GvG I don’t know what to say to you.
GL HF?

Disclaimer: I didn’t read all the notes, but the call for a sword nerf hit me. Nerf the sword again and buff the scepter because OP loves scepter and wants all the mesmers play scepter? No.

Scepter deserves a rework to make a proper main hand condition weapon, but the sword has already been nerfed a lot, stop calling for nerfs for your fellow mesmers that don’t like condition builds.

Veilbot! (somewhat joking)

But take a look at your traits and consider how flexible our profession is!

We can be tanky and go with the melees, or we can be a bit more squishy and stay far from the heavy damage.

We have the most powerful tactical tools in the game: veil and portal (and mass invisibility).

We have powerful buff/debuff capabilities (think about timewarp and signet of inspiration or null field and boon removing from gs/sword and traited shatters) and some support (healing mantras and healing/cond removing shatters)…

What does your team need? Build accordingly

MartyPartys.9187:

Clones and phantasm’s healthpool and armor scale with the amount of enemies you are facing. Facing a group of 20 players, the clones and phantasm’s health & armor would multiply by 20. This would help shatter and phantasm mesmers.

Make them scale on a percentage of mesmer’s effective health (armor/hp), with a cap on 75% of mesmer’s EH for phantasms and 50-60% for clones against 20 people.

MartyPartys.9187:

Chaotic interruption -> all hard crowd control done by you instead of interrupt, trait remains grandmaster.

Seems a bit OP, but I concur that interrupts are so random that is hard to base your playstyle on them.

MartyPartys.9187:

Chaos storm applies daze on creation (100% chance) and pulses conditions every second after.

This sounds very nice!

MartyPartys.9187:

More aoe attacks like chaos storm, less RNG based.

Maybe a decent phantasm for torch? Would love a kamikaze phantasm exploding in a fire

MartyPartys.9187:

Null field -> remove aoe cap on this skill. There has to be a counter to melee trains.

Make it prioritize buffs, so it strips stability, aegis and protection over the rest…

MartyPartys.9187:

Prismatic understanding applies on all allies that you stealthed. This would apply to veil and mass invisibility. Trait would remain grandmaster.

This one, too, seems a really nice suggestion.

MartyPartys.9187:

Gap closers for mesmers (RTL for ele, leaps for warriors/guardians). Something that can close a gap, or would save your life. I agree that there is blink, but I would love to see it on a weapon skill.

Just fix Illusionary Leap. Make it a proper leap so the clone doesn’t get stuck on some tiny tiny rock on the battlefield :°

MartyPartys.9187:

Fix phase retreat, the skill should teleport you backwards, but sometimes it teleports you forward, when trying to get out of a killzone this can be rather deadly. (Fix the randomness)

Probably autotargeting issues, works fine for me

MartyPartys.9187:

Healing signet, passive: remove conditions, active: heals. Or any other condition removal we can count on.

Try the mantra? :P

MartyPartys.9187:

More out of combat swiftness, I had to switch out to centaur runes just to be able to keep up with the rest of my guild.. Give us a swiftness signet, or any other utility that would give us some more swiftness.

Doesn’t really apply to group play (you should rely on your group for that), but it would be nice for roaming…

Dranul.2094:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_vkoF5hsj38

Dius, Yak, XXX, TDA, CTNK, IC, INT, anyone I miss? Looking forward to pulling this off again <3

Proof you don’t need them veils

Mate, that backpack looks heavy, you sure it wont slow you down in the fight?

Hopefully the Great Random Number Generator In The Sky will have us fighting again soon

In the meantime, have fun and goodluck!

Nretep.2564:

Menaka.5092:

It behaves like it records the position for the blast finisher when you enter stealth but applies it’s effect when you exit stealth

Isn’t it better that way ? You see a fire field and want to give your mates might, press prestige, fire field runs out, you come out of your stealth and nothing happens.

Yes, it’s pretty wierd, but I think it’s ok the way it is.

Considering most fields won’t last much longer than 3 seconds, nope, I don’t think it’s better that way: it’s just too hard to react to the field, position yourself and wait 3 seconds for the blast to go off.

Someone in a suggestion thread mentioned that The Prestige could be changed to work like Temporal Curtain/Into the Void (pre-nerf): press once for enter stealth, press twice for exit (and damage + blast combo).

In any case, I would prefer that the blast finisher considered the exit position as the finisher position, instead of the start position.

Actually, the torch blast finisher behavior is really weird.

• Drop a field, start The Prestige inside it, walk outside the field, when you emerge from stealth the blast finisher will apply on the initial position
• Start The Prestige, stay still, drop a field on yourself, when you emerge from stealth the blast finisher will apply
• Start The Prestige, move away, drop a field on yourself, when you emerge from stealth the blast finisher will NOT apply

It behaves like it records the position for the blast finisher when you enter stealth but applies it’s effect when you exit stealth

Very fun primetime today in GBL, ty for the good fights and /salute to BLAK for the GvG
(and… you didn’t expect the golems in that north camp, uh?)

I’ve been late to the video showoff but here it is, our adventures in EB on July 24:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1B8s1SYq3tg

Same here (looking forward for the week)

about the last week match (OT!), we had some fun in EB on July 24:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1B8s1SYq3tg

/salute to the people from RS in Gandara borderland spawn, we had some nice fights (dat VM engi!)!

Using mantras (concentration, restoration) in a wvw group build with the 20% cooldown and restorative mantras traits. They work like a charm.

Mantra of concentration is also my first choice as a stun breaker in my frontline shatter build.

Mantra of pain is very good as a support healing perspective, given the low cooldown.

Sword: Bolt, Zenith, Asura cultural
GS: Zenith, Sylvari cultural
Staff: Zenith, Dragon festival
Focus: Asura cultural, Charr low level (the one with a sparky trail)
Spear: Zenith

Torch: working towards TA torch skin
Pistol: undecided (Invaders at the moment)

I didn’t read the whole thread, so there may be duplicates.

Also, bear in mind I’m wvw focused (big battles, not roaming)

• The fact that the traitline specialized on shatters gives condition damage, since it synergizes really badly with pretty much all shatter builds (we feel the difference a lot more now that confusion damage has been reduced to ridicolous levels)
• Torch and scepter need some love
• The nerf to into the void was too harsh, lowering the cooldown to .25 or .5 seconds would make it useful again
• Portal still lacks a range indicator
• How fast our illusions die in WvW (big fights, not roaming)
• Lack of useful condition builds for WvW (big fights) after The Big Confusion Nerf™
• Restorative Mantras scaling so badly with healing power
• Speaking of mantras, Mantra of Pain damage feels underpowered (but the synergy with restorative mantras is nice)
• The buffs to interrupt builds are really nice IMHO, but it’s quite hard to land an interrupt on pvp players: the casting time on magic bullet and illusionary wave, the nerf to into the void, the randomness of chaos storm, the landing time of diversion make it really hard to react in time to the quick player animations, so landing an interrupt feels more chance than skill based (with the notable exception of mantra of distraction)
• Our only way to access torment is a passive trigger, gimping our condition options even more
• Lack of reliable ways to gain protection
• Lack of a decent blast finisher (torch is not)
• Lack of a phantasm-oriented elite skill (for example: summon X random phantasms at the same time, with x >= 3)
• The fact that Illusionary Leap clone gets stuck on the terrain at least 50% of the time

Thank you everyone for the awesome reset (at least on FSP border), looking forward for more fights this week!

pejot.4806:

Esprit Dumort.3109:

If we are matched up against a server with a fraction of the coverage we have, are we supposed to go against the very purpose of WvW and not take towers?

I never said it. I just explained the source of QQ ^.^

And I know Gandara has a lot of roaming guild groups, and I really enjoyed fighting them this week (except YaK, whom I have yet to see with less then 30 ppl…)

Thing is, our guilds can find fights and have fun, it’s much worse for our PUGs.

We did split our guild group (so about 15 per group) on Monday I think, it was good fun and we really want to do it again, but there’s no point if the only resistance (people that actually fight instead of waypointing or running away) we find is 50+ blobs

It is, sadly, a bad matchup. And there will be more bad matchups because the server rating comes from map coverage over the 24h/week instead of how much “fun” the actual match is: PvDoor is the most “rewarding” wvw (server wise and wxp/xp wise).

We (and I think it’s the same for you) are bored of smashing against gates of undefended towers and keeps, we are bored of oceanic zergs rolling around for wxp/xp transforming the maps in lagfests (yesterday night on… I think it was rof or dl garrison, unplayable).

Cya on the battlefield!

One or two weeks ago we had an awesome fight with my guild on north camp of an enemy borderland, using my portals and veils to move our group of about 20 and take on 30-40 enemies that kept running back from the near spawn. My portal keybind was on fire when they finally managed to catch us

I hope ANet considered that achievement points rewarded by an achievement should be related to the time invested, while working on the next patch. It’s silly to think that you can get more AP from burning paper dragons and such than from killing 250k people in wvw…

It already has a 0.25s cast time and good players were already dodging the pull before the nerf.

Reducing the delay to 0.25s would make it usable again – at the moment is useless

The only improvement I’ve seen is some love for interrupt builds (that are really fun to play, in spvp at least)

Our condition builds are effectively useless in any game type (PVE, sPVP/tPVP, WvW)

Our WvW builds and role are confined to a very tiny niche (boon stripping + veil/portal)

torment on scepter block… yeah a huge buff to mesmers (while nerfing pretty much everything else)

You forgot to mention the focus nerf: “oh, look, a mesmer dropped a temporal curtain, let me reach for the other side of the borderland before he can pull me into the void…”

+1 for the thread title, Torment isn’t worth the effort

Couldn’t find it in the patch notes, anyone tested it out?

Esplen.3940:

Scepter/Pistol, Scepter/Sword, Scepter/Torch are all viable.
Scepter/Pistol provides good synergy with ConDmg builds.
Scepter/Sword provides good blocking potential.
Scepter/Torch provides good initiation and escapes potential.

As a frontline mesmer, I tried Scepter/Sword for the double block: it somewhat works, but the random shift on clone spawn makes it hard to work with them in the middle of an enemy zerg

ilr.9675:

^did that guy just say he’s getting kited on a class that specializes in burst Rifle pressure?

I think he did, yes

Ok I Did It.2854:

I play a Mesmer a good bit also, and from what they are saying we also get it, this could be devastating to say the least, again hopefully its traited correctly, if its not, WvW is going to turn into Necro/Mesmer/Thief only.

WvW isn’t only roaming… all organized guild groups (15+) I’ve seen on Gandara and the servers we faced run with all the professions, with a strong component of guardians and warriors

Having objectives is one way to create focus points for fights, otherwise you could end up chasing each other for hours.

Single instanced map, 3 tiers:

• 10 man, small tower
• 20 man, bigger tower, 2 gates
• 30 man, keep

Commander can queue his squad size tier or higher: 21 members squad can join 30-man tier, but not 20-man.

Everyone gets max supply (including wvw rank bonuses) at start.

Tower/keep is neutral at start.

Every N minutes an event starts in a random “supply point” outside the tower/keep. To resupply you must stay inside the circle at the supply point (like conquering a camp, but without the NPCs), everyone standing in the circle gets full supply.

This way, attackers will always have a chance to get more supply (and/or fight over it) to build more siege, while defenders must choose to push outside in full force to block resupply and leave the tower/keep undefended or have someone defending and push with a smaller (and less effective, more prone to being wiped) group.

Killing one player gives N% points (wiping a guild could scale 10/20/30% with tiers – assuming it takes more time to kill more people).

Holding the tower/keep gives N% (1%?) point every N (20?) seconds.

The match ends when:

• one guild reaches 100%
• or after N max minutes (30? 45?); the guild with top points wins.
• or if any commander concedes victory; the guild with top points wins.

Players from the winning guild gets a rank chest and wxp equal to conquering stonemist (maybe limited to points/time victory, to avoid possible abuse of the concede mechanic).

The servers get rewarded with [tier-number] * [match time in ticks] * [guild percentage points]: for example a guild finishing second place with 50% points on 20-man tier after 30 minutes, assuming 20-man tier-number is 20 (ANet should work the numbers for a balanced reward) brings 20 * 2 * 0.5 = 20 points to his server, like holding a tower for 30 minutes, so having guilds fighting in those instances won’t detract from the “open world” WvW.

DanyK.3842:

Thief is pretty bad and anything from 10 up is mainly used as a moving blast finisher.

After our eles left WvW, one of our thieves yesterday was our only healer, stealing from rangers and dropping/blasting the waterfield. Just a L2P issue: every profession can provide some utility with the right setup and player skill

But I concur with you that the OP question is misleading: you can rate professions for specific roles, not for “all around”.

Banners are powerful, but situational.

The only “fix” I would welcome is to restrict the grabbing of a banner to our party/guild.

If you want something more mobile, go shouts.

Two days ago I got a full miss (0 damage) on a stationary mob with no obstacles around… guess I’ll stick with my staff and shatters for a while…

Nretep.2564:

Menaka.5092:

Anyone having a problem with Feedback since the last patch? Using it in WvW gets me teleported in random places.

Not an issue with feedback. Not an issue from last patched.
Reflecting teleport-projectiles. Working as intended, feedback is not supposed to be a fool-proof skill.

I honestly never noticed this before. I’ll try to test it in the mists

Sounds like a good idea to me: PVE people gets shiny skins from fractals and dungeons, sPVP people get rank emotes… give us WvW players something to show for all the hours (and money) spent in WvW !

My take on arrowcarts:

• they should not be able to hit from behind the gates, this would limit the damage to rams to AC strategically placed on walls or cliffs, in line of sight so they can be countered
• damage and precision (% of arrowkittenting a target) should falloff with distance: arrows are light and affected by the winds, unlike catapult and trebs payloads
• I’m not sure, and correct me if I’m wrong, but I think they don’t get damaged by retaliation or consumed by use anymore? If so, you can keep defending a tower with all walls down and no supplies just by having pre-built arrow carts. It would be nice to have a mechanism in place for ACs (maybe siege in general excluding rams and golems?) to require resupply for keep shooting

Anyone having a problem with Feedback since the last patch? Using it in WvW gets me teleported in random places.

Hjulstad.6317:

Menaka.5092:

I’m experimenting with a chaos 20, inspiration 20, illusions 30 frontline shatter build with power/vit/tough gear, melandru runes, berserker weapons (gs, s/f) and jewels and (drum roll) mantra of concentration(!!), mirror images and feedback.

It doesn’t really work, at least not in unorganized ZvZ. Of course I kill people, but I can’t run trough a zerg like a warrior or guardian

Thats almost exact whar i run hehe.. but swap mirror for blink, blink imo is an awesome gtfo skill when it gets to hot.. and i run with ascended cavallier neck and exotic knight rings and valk access.. works great

Ahhh TUPs, I love (hate, really: speaking from Gandara) your zergs, so organized and well packed. I made this build for a similar environment, but I should really join a big guild to try it out for good.

And yes, I miss my blink (played with that since almost the start), maybe I’ll try sacrificing mirror images to get it back

Dawdler.8521:

Menaka.5092:

I’m experimenting with a chaos 20, inspiration 20, illusions 30 frontline shatter build with power/vit/tough gear, melandru runes, berserker weapons (gs, s/f) and jewels and (drum roll) mantra of concentration(!!), mirror images and feedback.

It doesn’t really work, at least not in unorganized ZvZ. Of course I kill people, but I can’t run trough a zerg like a warrior or guardian

You cant? I can with a 0/20/20/25/5 build and 2 piece knight armour/soldier armour and trinkets/berserker jewels. Your problem however is probably the greatsword – try the staff. If a zerg is attacking you, pop sheild just in case, swap for blurred frenzy, distortion shatter and then do a 360 and staff #2 if the zerg hasnt rolled over you yet. Probably want blink in there too instead of mirror images. If you get killed, then any class would have gotten killed that didnt pop invounerability or blew all cooldowns on healing (which is of course the slight Guardian/Warrior advantage). What the Mesmer does in the same situations is simply evade with your skills. If you are attacking a zerg, plow through it with etheral fields and chaos armour combos until it has scattered enough to focus down people (unless of course they necro bomb, then you dont want to be anywhere near it to begin with). Staff helps immensly when manouvering near zergs.

I can’t really learn to love the staff, its projectiles feel so slow

I’m experimenting with a chaos 20, inspiration 20, illusions 30 frontline shatter build with power/vit/tough gear, melandru runes, berserker weapons (gs, s/f) and jewels and (drum roll) mantra of concentration(!!), mirror images and feedback.

It doesn’t really work, at least not in unorganized ZvZ. Of course I kill people, but I can’t run trough a zerg like a warrior or guardian