Guild Wars 2

Johje Holan.4607:

Attack the Strong

Double points for attacking the strongest server.

I really like this, but how to implement it?

Jana.6831:

Menaka.5092:

morrolan.9608:

Menaka.5092:

The most recent shunning of WvW (excluding the Golem week) has been the changes to the network code to help (s/t)PvP lag that ANet admitted they knew it would give problems to WvW players, and still they went with it. Because ESPOOOOOOOOOORTSSSSSS. As a result, WvW map cap has been lowered.

I don’t remember this was it explicitly stated in that lag thread?

I tried to find the thread, but forum search is broken and google is not helping. I’m pretty sure it was mentioned by the guy that lowered the map cap.

Yes, they uploaded a patch that made pvp lags better but wvw lags worse. they didn’t know before though, they just found out when a ton of wvw players were complaining.
But, come to think of it, that was in April March…

Edit: Here’s the link:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/WvW-Lag-March-2015/page/2

Edit²: I had another quote in mind where he said they just discovered the wvw bug after they put the pvp patch in game. So it looks as if they knew/could’ve guessed before by that quote I linked.

Thanks, that’s it

morrolan.9608:

Menaka.5092:

The most recent shunning of WvW (excluding the Golem week) has been the changes to the network code to help (s/t)PvP lag that ANet admitted they knew it would give problems to WvW players, and still they went with it. Because ESPOOOOOOOOOORTSSSSSS. As a result, WvW map cap has been lowered.

I don’t remember this was it explicitly stated in that lag thread?

I tried to find the thread, but forum search is broken and google is not helping. I’m pretty sure it was mentioned by the guy that lowered the map cap.

apharma.3741:

You should also add that some runes are prohibitively expensive with alternatives being either not very cheap or sometimes require you to PvE a fair bit to get. For example nightmare runes, hoelbrak, strength etc.

That’s without mentioning ones you can’t get any more like generosity or the recipes aren’t around like tormenting and perplexity which also require items which are hard to get.

I think the cost of runes and sigils is a direct consequence of wrong design choices. They already reworked many runes, and still the vast majority is considered either a “cheap alternative” or downright “useless”.

There’s a reason if everyone wants Strength runes for PVE (and some WvW builds too): they give the best overall damage. Why can’t we have alternatives that can give the same amount of damage with some secondary effect variation?

Hoelbrak… good damage boost and 20% negative condi duration. Very strong for WvW, so people will seek those runes and avoid the rest. It’s not by random chance that many frontliners use Hoelbrak or Melandru… why not rework some of the runesets now considered “useless” to give some variation around the negative condi duration?

Same goes with the price of food btw… you have 3 or 4 food buffs that cost tens of times more than the others. Why? Because they grant negative condi duration or the best damage in game. Everything else is sub-par. The nice thing is that they introduced some more recipes with negative condi duration, the only problem is that those are even more expensive to craft than the old one

Commoner.2796:

Anti-Zerg Week – Each Player debuffs all player allies within a range of 1500 around them. I propose a 5% penalty to downed health per player and a 10% penalty in the amount of time before you are forced to respawn. This would mean you would die instantly if you had 20 or more player allies nearby and be forced to respawn instantly if you die with 10 or more allied players nearby.

this is a very interesting concept: an area buff/debuff/effect given out by each player that can control what happens when X charges are in the same area

Idea for a funny one: You are the bomb, all characters give out this area effect on a 1200 range. When any character reaches X stacks (10? 15? 20?) of the area effect, they explode taking 5k damage and launching 10 targets around them. Try blobbing like that…

UltraElectroMagnetic.2187:

Also, I really think Glicko rating system should be disabled during special events.

Definitely. Doesn’t really makes sense to rate servers based on their capability to golem rush entire maps (like it’s happening right now).

Josh Davis.6015:

I’m seeing “no rally” pop-up a lot.

Thoughts?

As an organized guild fighting bigger groups in WvW, there’s nothing worse than a single death rallying 5+ (sometimes even 10 or more) people…

We feel like having a cap on the number of people that can rally from a single death in WvW would be nice in general not only for a single week, but an event to test it out could be interesting.

It could be something as harsh as “an eye for an eye” – one rally per death, maybe dictated by who did the most damage on the target? – or a more balanced 3 or even 5 rally per death/per server (to not give an unfair advantage in 3-way fights).

Another somewhat-related problem is that when the enemy group is big enough, they can have some people hard-ress defeated players while the fight is still going on, but that’s probably trickier to fix.

I’ll throw in a few more ideas:

• Sudden death: after 30 seconds in combat, all people involved are brought down to 1hp
• Pinball Wars 2: catapult and trebuchet projectiles bounce.
• Super World vs World Box: you can only play with SAB weapons (pointy stick, whip, etc) and maybe special “8bit” siege?

UltraElectroMagnetic.2187:

• Gotta Go Fast
• Thunderstorm

Ultimaistanza.4793:

• Cutbacks
• Labor Strike
• Light as a feather
• Unlimited Powah!
• Consortium Catalog Siege

sephiroth.4217:

Activate friendly fire.

Seed.5467:

• Asuran Tech-Week
• Elemental chaos Week

x indigo x.6981:

Force-neutral siege

I really like these!

Ultimaistanza.4793:

• OH YEAH! – Siege does no damage to gates or wall, but players can hit walls and do significantly more damage to both.

I would say: no siege can be deployed at all, players do increased damage to gates and can damage walls.

Ultimaistanza.4793:

• Dhuum’s Wrath – No downstate.
• KAMIKAZE!!!!! – When a person (and maybe mobs) dies it leaves a Big Ol Bomb behind. The bomb doesn’t effect friendly units of whichever side dropped it.

Put these together for maximum fun

UltraElectroMagnetic.2187:

Haunted House – Walls, Gates and other Structures have strong perma-retaliation (anti-PvD basically)

What about: Electrified fences, gates have permanent Shocking Aura.

UltraElectroMagnetic.2187:

The Watchers
Caravan

Ultimaistanza.4793:

Un-Righteous Indignation

Put all these together during “NPCs on steroid” week!

Ultimaistanza.4793:

Build Mode – When you cap a structure, all destructible walls and gates spawn in as destroyed.
Un-Righteous Indignation – Lords don’t gain RI after a point is capped, but instead have a constant buff that allows them to do the same damage as RI without the invuln.

What about, instead, capping doesn’t fix walls/gates? So if you cap something you need to repair whatever damage you did to get inside. And the lord is not invulnerable so it can be flipped back istantly.

Seed.5467:

Dolyaks Best Friend Week: Escort and protect Dolyaks on their way to work and earn +2 Points for your world upon successful Escort and Protection. Loosing a Dolyak will cost your world -2 Points.

I really like the idea of “negative points” for NOT defending something.

Hutchy.5430:

Corporate take over. – This mode adds the option for guilds to just buy towers and keeps with gold.

This would be hilarious: bribe guards to get through the gates :°D

Thank you for taking the time to learn about the class, I wish more people were like you.

Extremely good support class with Staff and Cleric gear, but bad for everything else (for now).

Jurica.1742:

I drop other mesmers a lot because every warrior and his grandmother is playing mesmer right now, so its at the moment the easiest matchup by far just because 99% of the people that play the “OP MANTRA BUILD OMG NERF” actually suck and are free kill if you actually think a bit instead of mashing your face into the keyboard and if you don’t have the reaction time of a camel in surgery. Also the mantra build is the most boring mesmer build ever created. You spend 90% of your time just charging mantras and underpreform in teamfights.

This is so true
Since the patch I crossed only 2 or 3 decent mesmers in wvw, all the rest was cannon fodder jumping on the “mesmer is OP” bandwagon and sucking hard at it.

Easiest to kill for me? Warrior. Such easy tells to interrupt…

Simonoly.4352:

I’m experiencing this with all manner of things. Illusionary Inspiration is super clunky because of this.

can confirm this, it’s quite annoying

It’s gone from the tooltip as well. Stealth nerf?

Aomine.5012:

Menaka.5092:

Aomine.5012:

A lot of panicking Mesmers show up to defend their broken stealth because they’re abusing it right now :P

Anyway, I don’t think stealth has to go, but I think PU should go, and using any clones or phantasm in stealth should instantly get you “revealed” at the moment of cast. It should be more in-line with thief. When in stealth, Mesmer shouldn’t be able to do damage or set up burst at all.

So… thief can “setup” burst by going in stealth, but it’s a no-no for mesmers?

1. Currently Mesmer is allowed to stay in stealth while phantasm or clones dish out damage. It is reasonable to do that if the caster cast them BEFORE they go into stealth, but able to summon some of the phantasm and clones while in stealth just because it doesn’t directly does damage is unreasonable.

So they shouldn’t be able to setup burst at all while in stealth. At the same time, a thief can open with a 8-12k backstab from stealth without any issue.

Aomine.5012:

2. Thief’s burst involving direct contact with the foes, while Mesmer’s burst can set up on any location. Not to mention it’s also AOE too.

Try using mirror blade from 1200 range, from stealth, on an opponent that is aware that the mesmer is around. You’ll fail. The projectile isn’t stealth, so it can be dodged. Also, from maximum range it doesn’t bounce back and you lose a ton of damage on your burst, and the shatter from IP doesn’t apply. The optimal burst is Mirror Blade + Mind Wrack from melee range.

Also, only the mindwrack component of the burst is AoE, actually having mirror blade bounce to a secondary target will lower your burst.

Aomine.5012:

3. Many of the Mesmer’s stealth completely ignores reveal and still go into stealth..

I didn’t test it after the patch, but before the patch only Decoy worked that way and it may have been fixed since.

Aomine.5012:

4. Thief cannot do their burst while being in evade mode or invulnerable mode. If you’re talking about S/D that can evade, they lose a tremendous amount of stealthing potential by choosing that weapon set.

If you are talking about Blurred Frenzy, it roots you in place, so it’s easily countered. F4 shatter uses your illusions so you actually trade your potential burst for survival.

Aomine.5012:

5. Thief is much much MUCH weaker than Mesmer now, with way more counter-play than Mesmer.

[citation needed]

Aomine.5012:

6. Thief does not have easy access to reflect like Mesmer does, so projectiles that can track through stealth works less on Mesmer.

reflecting projectiles back will give you revealed, would you enjoy that?

I’m assuming the OP has lost a few duels against a PU condi mesmer or similar and he’s now mad.

Let’s put things in perspective:

• the game is not balanced around 1v1
• in PvP, stealth makes you lose your point, so it’s actually counter-productive (so much that the current “meta” build goes Inspiration instead of Chaos)
• in WvW (1v1 roaming), every class can easily outrun a PU condi mesmer
• in WvW (1v1 roaming) you can learn to counter the obvious shatter setups for a PU power mesmer

OP, if you had come to this forum asking how to counter a specific mesmer build, you would have got tons of tips and tricks on how to deal with mesmers. You want to get better? Ask how to win a fight, don’t ask for the almighty gods to nerf your opponent so you can lazily win without changing how you play.

Aomine.5012:

A lot of panicking Mesmers show up to defend their broken stealth because they’re abusing it right now :P

Anyway, I don’t think stealth has to go, but I think PU should go, and using any clones or phantasm in stealth should instantly get you “revealed” at the moment of cast. It should be more in-line with thief. When in stealth, Mesmer shouldn’t be able to do damage or set up burst at all.

So… thief can “setup” burst by going in stealth, but it’s a no-no for mesmers?

This build is what I’m currently running with my guild

It’s pretty much what I was running before the patch, with the added bonuses from the Spec revamp.

The build has nice damage spike (Chaos Storm and iZerker+MoP and MindStab+MoP) and an amazing amount of support:

• AoE condi removal
• AoE healing
• AoE invuln on F4
• Timewarp (traited)
• Chaos Storm on the spike

Some notes:

• I usually save Timewarp for a defensive spike since Slow on the enemies and Resistance help with survival, but it’s situational
• Veil with PU is great for engages
• Furious Interruption and Power Block are great for spiking down single targets.
• You could go for Shattered Concentration instead to help cleanse out boons on the enemy

The build is punished by the nerf to the staff trait, since you usually won’t get to leap in your Chaos Storm (you drop it on the melee spike and you usually don’t want to be in there), so the cooldown will only be reduced by 10%, and that’s only if you get to pop your Chaos Armor for defense, but that trait is still the best one in Chaos Master tier.

Chaos, did you experience any problems with the block not spawning a clone? It seemed to work unreliably for me after the patch.

Dondagora.9645:

Real Illusion[F5]: When you use this shatter, you split your existence amongst your clones and phantasms, making them into real illusions. Real Illusions use every skill you use, including Utility, Elite, and Heal. Real Illusions cannot be shattered unless killed. Your own stats are divided amongst these Real Illusions, meaning having one Real Illusion halves your stats, having two divides your stats by 3, and four gives a quarter to each of the Illusions, including yourself. When an illusion is killed, you get those stats back, but even if you get vitality back it does not mean you get the health back[meaning the damage your illusion took is inherited]. Real Illusions, while not shatterable, still count as your illusions but are unable to be overwritten. They inherit traits that affect illusions, their weapons, and so on.

Thought this might be a cool idea for an F5, plus wanted to bump this~

I like the idea of splitting the health pool, but there’s no much point in splitting other stats (except maybe Power) because of how they scale. For example, splitting toughness would have wild repercussions on the damage we take.

Also, considering our base health pool, each “Real Illusion” would have pretty much the same HP as current phantasms (and we all know it’s not much).

I can see a similar mechanic being really broken, tho… since you can’t overwrite the illusions, if you start with 3 clones up you are giving up any chance of getting a phantasm (the only way it could work is with 1 illusion up, that way you can cast a phantasm and get 2 because your illusion cast the phantasm as well).

With 3 illusions you could drop 4xNull Field or Time Warp, pretty crazy stuff.

This question resurfaces from time to time. My “solution” at the moment is: keep my old sets with expensive runes in my bank until the day we’ll be able to salvage them back or the runes are nerfed into oblivion.

yeah it really feels like I should start streaming to get beta access, even if I already have hundreds of followers on youtube and videos (including WvW guides) with thousands of views

After another round of testing:

Conditions

• as predicted, the WvW meta is still Power. Even if the conditions got a lot stronger, condition cleansing got even stronger (all the changes to Guardians…)
• Mistrust feels useless in big groups and very weak – even with Perplexity runes – in roaming
• Ineptitude feels weak damage-wise in a group setting: the glamour meta will never come back

General

• At the moment I find Power/Interrupt/PU stronger than any other mesmer build for backline focusing. The Illusion spec doesn’t feel mandatory unless you go for condi shatter.
• Traited Mirror is very fun for roaming, didn’t test for group play yet

Domination

• as I reported in our official bug thread, Confounding Suggestions at the moment is broken with both Runes of the Mesmer and Sigil of Paralyzation.
• I like Blurred Inscriptions, but the invulnerability applies only AFTER you cast the signet, so it can be easily interrupted… also, I really dislike Signet of Ether for a group build. The cooldown is just way too long even if traited.

Dueling

• Evasive Mirror seems nice if somewhat situational, but the alternatives are nice as well: Dueling Master is a hard pick!

Chaos

• The Mirror effect on Manipulations is applied after the cast (doesn’t really help with casting Mass Invis for example)
• PU is really nice for big groups (on veil) and small roaming parties (Mass Invis)

Inspiration

• Restorative Illusions works for a frontline build, but for a backline build Protected Phantasms is a must-have
• Illusionary Inspiration is very nice on paper, but quite hard to use properly during a WvW fight
• Temporal Enchanter has a 5 targets limit and works horribly with everything but Timewarp and Null Field. They should really consider reworking this on the other glamours.

Illusions

• Persistence of Memory should be buffed to have anyone take it over Compunding Power

Some daze and stun duration numbers:

• Mantra of Distraction stun with Confounding Suggestions lasts for 1.15s instead of 1.25s (need independent confirmation), not sure about the daze
• MoD with Rune of the Mesmer and CS gives a 0.2s daze (not stun)
• MoD with Sigil of Paralyzation and CS gives a 0.2 daze (not stun)
• Diversion (traited AoE) with Rune of the Mesmer and CS (on cooldown) gives a 1.25s daze (so it seems CS works correctly here and the rune doesn’t work at all)

These I verified by recording in PvP lobby at 60fps and splicing the video in a video editor.

This was probably in game before: if you don’t have a main hand equipped, your clone-generating skills (sword block, deceptive evasion) won’t generate a clone.

This is one of the things I meant to test, do you have video footage for this?

Grumpy.6027:

Um i beg to differ. Minr its a GM and there are much more powerful Aoe healing going on then the mesmer. Nerf or alter Vampiric Aura instead of Healing Prism. Or ake it Vamp Aura doesnt work on it, not that hard to do. I wouldnt mind if it was set at 150 healing with no cd but tbh its not nearly a game changer like ALOT of other traits, but it definately didn’t warrant that kind of nerf.

Blurred frenzy on 3 targets with vampiric aura was 24 (blurred frenzy is 8 × 3 targets) x 5 (allies) x 300 healing. It was broken. The problem is that instead of fixing it, they broke it the other way, rendering it useless and it will probably take years to fix.

Vashury guide is a great way to learn how to shatter properly.

Still waiting for a fix since 2012.

As I said in the other thread, if they wanted to fix it, they could make it similar to the engineer trait: 12% of what you heal yourself will go to your allies. You could even rework the number since it’s a minor, make it 10% or 8%, but that works, scales well up/down and apparently is not OP since it has not ben nerfed in the same patch.

The current version is completely useless, far worse than any of the other support traits in game.

yeah I think the engi trait works correctly and since it hasn’t been nerfed I guess it’s fine for ANet too… can we have something like that instead of this silly ICD?

Curunen.8729:

The thing which bugs me the most is before the patch it was possible to play condition shatter without Scepter thanks to the 2 torment stacks.

After the patch it is almost impossible to play condition shatter without Scepter – try not using Scepter (ie Sword/Torch, Focus, Pistol and Staff) and it’s beyond pathetic.

I hate being forced into mandatory use of a weapon when there was more flexibility before the patch.

Hell I even used Greatsword with condition sigils for a while, and now it’s totally impossible.

Currently I’m having to run Sword/Torch + Scepter/Focus which is the compromise that I have to make until MtD is fixed.

Yeah I was loving hybrid mesmer with Staff+GS and maim, but it doesn’t drop enough pressure now

Damage done = (Weapon strength) * Power * (skill-specific coefficient) ( * ferocity multiplier if crit) / (target’s Armor)

consider an example damage of 1000, a skill coefficient of 1.0 (to keep things simple) and target armor is 2100

• an average hit would be 1047 in the first scenario and 1130 in the second scenario
• an average crit would be 2325 in the first and 2363 in the second

power scales better overall, so unless you are able to get a ton of precision and ferocity in exchange for power, you’ll always be better off stacking power

Alpha.1308:

Menaka.5092:

I don’t know if Vampiric Aura or Prismatic Healing controlled the amount healed, but it would have been enough to make it scale with the skill coefficient to “fix” it or just make it work like engineer’s Medical Dispersion Field that has not been nerfed so it must be ok I guess.

But instead of working out a proper fix for this, they went for the easy way, “slap an ICD on it and be done with it”.

Such a nice trait has now been rendered completely irrelevant by a sloppy workaround.

first part, not really, it only healed about 250ish without healing power, so that’s horrible, but it was broken af if you beam spammed/aoe’d 3+ people

but pretty much the second half , yes

what I meant is that was wrong in the first place to have a fixed amount healed every time you healed yourself… it should have been a percentage of the healing you did to yourself, that way would have scaled easily with all the tiny effects from vampiric aura, foods, etc

Your initial post was about “a solo or pvp scenario”. In that scenario you can stack 20 vulnerability using Diversion (with Dazzling) on your target with 3 clones and IP and subsequently burst it down with Mind Wrack enjoying a 10% bonus damage from Fragility.

In PVE, applying vulnerability on the target is a group effort and other classes are arguably better than mesmer, but who cares? Everyone in the party will benefit from the vulnerability, and the mesmer will benefit 50% more (37.5% vs 25% damage increase).

I don’t know if Vampiric Aura or Prismatic Healing controlled the amount healed, but it would have been enough to make it scale with the skill coefficient to “fix” it or just make it work like engineer’s Medical Dispersion Field that has not been nerfed so it must be ok I guess.

But instead of working out a proper fix for this, they went for the easy way, “slap an ICD on it and be done with it”.

Such a nice trait has now been rendered completely irrelevant by a sloppy workaround.

you might want to check the other minor traits in Domination

I wanted to start a similar thread for the last few days. Robert, I don’t think Chaos wanted to downplay the effort from the rest of the team, but you’ve been the face we linked to the changes, so I guess it’s only natural that you’ve been mentioned here

You all did a good job with the mesmer rework, and I’m really looking forward to play the Chronomancer in HoT!

TyPin.9860:

Thief backstab needs to be in melee range

thieves have a handful of gap closers and teleports on 0 cooldown

TyPin.9860:

Mesmer shatter can be melee to increase damage, but doesn’t need to be. It can come from any direction and a very long range even.

dodging mirror blade from more than 300 range can be done while sleeping and the only combo from stealth that can give a similar damage to backstab is mirror blade + shatter from melee range

TyPin.9860:

Thief can be pushed or pulled during stealth to prevent him from getting to you. Often this results in stealth wearing off (in my experience at least). Mesmer with PU has a good chance the pull will get blocked due to aegis.

most classes aren’t as helpless as mesmer is against a stealthed enemy, pushes and pulls are only one of many counters

TyPin.9860:

Backstab always works in the same patterns. Mesmer burst from stealth has way more possibilities (like dodge baiting via phantasms), which only increase with additional stealth time.

you are burning your cooldowns to bait the dodges, seems fair to me?

TyPin.9860:

Thief gets revealed from Backstab. Mesmer can time shatter just when his stealth wears off, preventing him from being revealed.

thieves can also stun you with that same backstab, blind you istantly after that, teleport away and stealth again

I play WvW 99% of the time, so my answers are biased in that way.
Also, I strongly believe ANet is overreacting and knee-jerk overnerfing mesmers. So I’m biased that way too.

1: ANet lowered the skill floor. The skill ceiling is still there.
A lot of people that did like the class but weren’t good enough to play it in day to day are giving it a try again and having decent results because the traits have been reworked nicely and – most importantly – we don’t have to waste attribute points in useless stuff (condi dmg, condi duration) for a power shatter build. That increased the burst potential and we finally are on par with D/P thieves now.

2

If you are decently skilled, there’s no way you gonna take anything else than Power Block in Domination. The shatter trait feels week in comparison. I tested the Greatsword traid and I think it’s the weakest of the three: you can stack a bit of might and kite the few classes that don’t have gap closers for a few seconds, but that’s it.

If you can use Harmonious Mantras to get the damage buff in a sensible way in PvP I /bow to you. I can’t. I’ll consider it a PVE trait and move along.
I tried mistrust with runes of perplexity and the skill/reward ratio is abysmal.
So… we end up with Deceptive Evasion. A trait most Shatter builds can’t live without. Nothing more to say, still pretty much the only choice here in PvP.

Chaotic Interruption is a dream came true. You get rewarded for skillful play and your enemy gets punished. Doesn’t get much better than that.
Prismatic Understanding feels a bit too strong, but we should consider our counterpart – the thief – has much more on-demand access to stealth, with stonger benefits from it. Also, sitting in stealth for a long time doesn’t really help you doing anything except maybe run away from an angry/hungry zerg in WvW.
Bountiful Disillusionment is possibly the weakest of the three. Also, I don’t like the fact that you don’t really get rewarded for skillfully shattering: you get the boons even if your clones don’t hit the target at all. I would buff it, but link the buff to the number of clones successfully hitting the target: 2 might/1 stab per Mind Wrack, 2s Vigor/1 stab per Cry of Frustration, etc.

I didn’t test Mental Defense yet.
Illusionary Inspiration looks great – in theory. Feels clumsy in practice. It’s hard to predict when your boon share (and possibly Invulnerability) will go up and very hard to keep tabs on the cooldown. It’s probably very good for PVE dungeons and stuff, but I can’t really rely on it during a frantic outnumbered fight in WvW.
Temporal Enchanter works very well for Timewarp and Null field, and terribly bad for all the other Glamours. Veil should apply it while going through the Veil, Portal should apply it while going through the Portal. Feedback… oh god, make feedback ground targeted or something. It’s terrybad now really.

Didn’t get to test Ineptitude much, yet.
Master of Fragmentation gives you… utility on your shatters, but not much else. Doesn’t feel like a Grandmaster to me and doesn’t feel mandatory at all, if I take Illusions is for the CD reduction on illusion generation and on shatters, and for Maim in a hybrid or condi build.
Malicious sorcery would be nice, if only it worked.

3: does PU deserve a nerf tomorrow? No.
In a month if everyone still feels like it’s too strong? Sure. Make it a 50% or 66% increase. But let the meta settle before.

4: I played interrupts some times even before the patch. It’s good to have the traits consolidated so we can have a bit more options for our builds. After Power Block damage has been nerfed it feels perfectly reasonable: high risk and skill requirements, high reward.

5: After the Maim nerf, Illusions is arguably our weakest traitline, while Chaos – even with the gutted Staff trait and horrible alternatives in Master tier – is a good option and Inspiration offers interesting options to support the team.

6: both Staff and Torch are in a pityfull state right now. If I invest in a trait that requires a specific condition to be met, I expect for it to be stronger than other traits, because I’m going out of my way to pick it AND out of my way to use it. It’s not something that randomly happens while I play in my usual way.

7: I’m not planning to use mimic. Our utility slots are precious and very limited, can’t afford to waste one slot to play the same trick twice (on a long cooldown) even if it’s a good trick.

8: As I said, from a WvW point of view, TW is amazing. And yes, I’m using it over the alternatives.

9: WvW is full of people that picked up mesmer after the patch because they heard “it’s OP”. Fighting them is unexciting and boring most the time. I’ve faced one or two decent mesmers and those fights were actually very entertaining.

It’s another huge nerf ofc. In the meantime Elementalists, Guardians and Engis keep wrecking faces with their condi builds but that’s perfectly fine apparently.

Probably the world vs world buff
Try in the pvp lobby

With inspiration and chaos rework, support mesmer seems quite viable as well.

I react instead of trying to anticipate my foe’s actions. But who cares about 1v1?

Timewarp seems to refresh quickness and slow each second: if you have boon/condi duration (as per Chaos GM minor) it won’t stack in duration. Unclear if intended or a bug.

Toxsa.2701:

Haha, OP huh? Coming from the greatest Ranger’s counter currently (chuckle). Having the easiest access of reflect of all classes is not enough huh?

you know rangers have access to other weapons besides longbow?
just sayin’